/ 




Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 



THE GERMAN 
REPUBLIC 



BY 

WALTER WELLMAN 




NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 



COPTKIGHT, 1916, 
BT 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



All Rights of Translation into Foreign Languages (including 
the Scandinavian) Reserved by the Publishers 



4r. 



6*L 



PBINTED IN THE TT. 8. A. 

JUN 23 1916 

©CI.A431613 



tEfje German people 

WHOM THE WORLD HAS LOVED 

AND 
IN WHOM THE WORLD STILL HAS FAITH 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Teutonic Patriotism, Unity, Valor 9 
II. The Tribe Unconquerable and Un- 

CONQUERING 22 

III. The Mightiest Movement of the 

War 29 

IV. Opened Eyes 39 

V. The German Political Reformation 52 

VI. A Place in the Sun ? — Or in a Mad- 
house? 70 

VII. What Method in the Madness? . 84 

VIII. German Manhood Speaks to the 

World 104 

IX. A Special Word to America . . . 116 

X. Founding the German Republic . 133 

XI. The Great, Gentle Revolution . . 168 

XII. The Treaty of Universal Peace . . 174 

XIII. The Forward March of Civilization 181 

XIV. Germany at Last Conquers the 

World 190 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

CHAPTER I 

TEUTONIC PATRIOTISM, UNITY, VALOR 

After the outbreak of the Great War, in 
1914, the world saw the finest example of 
national patriotism and unity recorded in 
all the pages of history. 

For defense of Fatherland against a foe 
who nearly surrounded them the Ger- 
man people rose as one man with a single 
aim. 

Individualism at once became as noth- 
ing, the nation everything. Upon the al- 
tar of country all Germans were ready to 
lay their all. 

Every call of government for service and 
9 



THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC 

sacrifice met with instant, hearty response. 
Millions of Germans went to the front. 
They went with joy, their fathers, moth- 
ers, wives, children, sent them with pride. 

As soldiers they roused the admiration 
of the world, including their enemies. 
Their valor, their efficiency, their disci- 
pline, their power to enclure, suffer, 
achieve, became a model for all mankind. 

Its like on so great a scale, such out- 
pouring of the spirit of national devotion 
on the part of seventy millions of people, 
was never before seen. 

Germans dwelling in other lands were 
swept along with the flood of nationalism. 
Not only were their sympathies naturally 
with Fatherland, but so deep and strong 
ran their feeling that many of them in 
spirit ceased to be citizens of the coun- 
tries in which they lived and in which their 
interests and future were centered, their 
hearts and souls were back beyond the 
10 



THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC 

Rhine whence their blood had originally 
come. 

All German kind the world over gave to 
Fatherland loyalty that was complete, ab- 
solute, without mental reservation, ques- 
tion, criticism, analysis. To them Ger- 
many was infallible, could not err, could 
not blunder; everything of and for Ger- 
many was right, everything opposed to 
Germany was wrong. 

This unity of nationalism was unprece- 
dented among modern peoples in that it 
controlled not only all individual action 
and open expression but apparently all 
mentality. All Germans everywhere saw 
with the same eyes, heard with the same 
ears, thought the same thoughts, started 
with the same premises, followed the same 
logical path, arrived at the same conclu- 
sion. 

All people of German blood were typi- 
fied by one strong, stern, dominant but af- 
11 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

f ectionate German father whose wife, sons, 
daughters reverently looked up to him for 
wisdom and guidance. The hundred mil- 
lions or more Germans scattered through- 
out the world were one German family. 

Mankind gazed, admired, praised, and 
marvelled, marvelled how, by what magic, 
what secret charm, mental miracle or psy- 
chological prestidigitation this amazing 
result had been produced. 

The Greatest Tribe in the World 

As the onlookers thought about this 
most impressive human phenomenon, and 
tried to analyze and understand it their 
conclusions in general were: 

More than any other highly developed 
people the Germans are pervaded by the 
tribal spirit. Their unit of organization 
is the family, supreme authority at the 
head, blind obedience below, one ruling 
because he was born to rule, the others 
12 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

obeying because they were born to obey. 

The state is a great tribe, born and su- 
preme authority at its head, unquestion- 
ing obedience and submission by the mil- 
lions behind it. 

But individualism is not suppressed in 
either family or tribe. It would be impos- 
sible to suppress it and at the same time 
produce a people so virile, capable, effi- 
cient, energetic, educated, resourceful. 

Individualism is encouraged, developed 
— and then systematically limited. Every 
member of family or tribe is taught to de- 
velop himself, his character, his talents, to 
learn, work, achieve, think, attain excel- 
lence, if possible, usefulness almost always. 

But however successful he may be, how- 
ever strong he may make himself, no mat- 
ter how great his distinction and deserved 
fame and influence in his special field or 
circle of activity, he must never forget the 
fundamental tribal law of limitation, nor 
13 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

seek to go beyond it — the limiting point 
being where individualism comes in con- 
tact with the high authority the system has 
placed over it. 

No other tribe in the world has acquired 
as the Germans have acquired and prac- 
tised this art of building up individualism 
with all that goes naturally with it — and 
then the dead-line of superior authority 
beyond which it must not dare. 

It, therefore, stands out alone and dis- 
tinctive among the tribes of earth with 
culture and discipline, character and sub- 
missiveness, genius and limitation, thriv- 
ing side by side. 

It is a tribe with discipline as its chief 
characteristic, its keynote— discipline in 
the blood, in the character, the habits of 
the people — inculcated, trained, inherent, 
innate, universal. It starts in the cradle, 
is in the nursery, the kindergarten, the 
smallest school, the greatest university, on 
14 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

the farm, in the small workshop, the great 
factory, on the railway, the sea, in com- 
merce and industry, the army, the navy, 
the government, everywhere. 

The sacredness of authority and the 
duty of submission thereto is a fetich in 
this tribe ; and the higher the authority the 
nearer it approaches to the divine and ab- 
solute. It is more than a fetich, almost a 
religion, almost a substitute for Infinity. 

And the members of the tribe, even those 
with the most perfectly developed individ- 
ualism, are content to have it so, they do 
not wish to change it, they love the order- 
liness, the efficiency, the machine-like fit- 
ting of parts, every unit in its place, and 
all the units working together with most 
effective synchronism, which have natural- 
ly sprung from it. 



15 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

A Tribal Rule Just and Wise— A People 
Content 

It is a tribe in which there is not only 
this proficient individualism stopping 
short only at the deadline of high author- 
ity, born or established, but in authority 
there is proficiency, wisdom, justice, worth- 
iness of the respect and submission not 
only exacted but freely given. 

The paternal rule is strict, dominant, 
regulatory, disciplinary, rigorous, but it 
is at the same time highly intelligent, skill- 
ful, efficient, watchful, helpful, truly pa- 
ternal. It protects, nourishes, upbuilds, 
develops its subjects and their works. It 
is generally impartial. The weakest and 
least proficient of its children enjoy its 
alert care as well as the strongest and 
most successful. 

In this tribe there is little discontent, 
little cause therefor, few sullen or embit- 
16 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

tered ones, little envy of the luckier, few 
wolves even at the humblest doors, better 
care of the luckless and laggards than in 
any other of the world's great tribes. 

It is a tribe in which inevitably indi- 
vidualism has its most intensive develop- 
ment, because there the deadline of limita- 
tion rarely and only indirectly applies, in 
the arts, sciences, literature, philosophy, 
pedagogy, commerce, industrialism, and 
in these fields of endeavor the people pro- 
duce leaders who take high and often first 
rank in the world's lists. 

But it is a tribe in which inevitably the 
development of individualism in the field 
of political life is repressed, stunted, nar- 
rowed by the fixed and immovable limita- 
tions of the system, for here the deadline 
is indeed deadly. Excellent administra- 
tors, executives, large cogs in the com- 
plex, highly organized domestic machine, 
are produced by the thousands. Real 
17 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

statesmen, moulders of policies, shapers of 
the nation, leaders of thought and action 
able to command a following and with this 
strength exert influence in the higher ac- 
tivities of the state, are not produced at 
all. The system does not want them, does 
not permit them. 

The few who reach eminence in the pop- 
ular eye may be able, adroit, strong in 
their character and genius, but they have 
no strength of statesmanship behind them, 
no real leadership, no power, because they 
are put forward merely as fingers of the 
hand of preeminence, the highest author- 
ity, which itself came into being not by 
talent, performance, tested, tried, recog- 
nized fitness, but by birth. A great if not 
fatal weakness of the tribal organization 
is here. It is a great tribe without great 
statesmen. 

Not since Bismarck have the German 
people produced a political leader of the 
18 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

first rank, and he was pushed aside by the 
existing preeminence, which has taken 
good care he should never have a succes- 
sor. So intense and overwhelming is the 
fetich of the sacredness of high authority, 
the repression of systematized discipline, 
the German people have been quite content 
not to have any more Bismarcks, and to 
go on indefinitely with the divinely ap- 
pointed substitute. Genius of the first or- 
der they like and put high on the pedestal 
of their homage in every other field of 
human endeavor, but they do not care for 
it in their higher government, they are con- 
tent to have the ship of state sailed by 
mediocrity. 

The internal organization of the ship is 
well-nigh perfect. Discipline and efficiency 
reign there. Whither the ship is going, 
what is to happen to her in storm or stress, 
collision in darkness or running upon the 
rocks of a foreign shore, is no affair of the 
19 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

workers down below. They simply obey 
orders. All else they leave to the high au- 
thority up on the bridge, in which their 
trust and confidence are supreme. 

Prosperous, growing rich, content, gath- 
ering self-assurance with augmenting af- 
fluence, no serious thought has entered the 
average German mind of changing his 
tribal system of obedience to the higher. 
When policies are framed, decisions tak- 
en, orders given, no matter what they are 
or what they involve, even the peace and 
life of the nation itself, the national habit 
and instinct at once respond with a loyal 
completeness which excludes from the 
mind all analysis, closes the mouth to all 
criticism, shuts the ears to all murmur- 
ings. 

Attack a great tribe like this, and what 

is to be expected? Just what the world 

saw, marvelled at, admired in the early 

days of the Great War — a hundred million 

20 



THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC 

people standing together, shoulder to 
shoulder, with but one purpose, one pas- 
sion, one aim, all thinking alike, all know- 
ing they and their leaders were right, none 
questioning, all obeying, all ready to fight 
to death for land, tribe, and cause. 

Such was the tribe of Teutons when the 
war began. 



21 



CHAPTER II 

THE TRIBE UNCONQUERABLE — AND UNCON- 
QUERING 

At the outset of the great combat most 
neutral onlookers were inclined to ascribe 
the quality of invincibility to this, the 
world's greatest and most closely knit 
tribe. They seemed masterful. Along 
with their wonderful unity and unprece- 
dented spirit of patriotic devotion they 
had organization and preparation so much 
superior to those of their enemies that the 
latter appeared to be engaged in a hope- 
less struggle. 

The neutral world looked on with bated 

breath. Whatever opinions were held as 

to the justice of the German cause, as to 

the wisdom and morality of those who had 

22 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

forced the war, as to the meaning of a 
German triumph to civilization, there ex- 
isted everywhere profound admiration for 
the spirit of the German people, for their 
valor as soldiers, for the skill and fore- 
sight of their military preparedness and 
organization, for their phenomenal energy 
and spectacular performance in the field 
of battle. 

No one would have been surprised to 
see the Teutons soon masters of Paris and 
much of France, with fair prospect of at- 
taining such power in Europe as to make 
them henceforth the foremost political 
power of the world. But the Battle of the 
Marne proved to be the turning point of 
the titanic combat. After that it was quite 
apparent Berlin was not to be a second 
Rome. The world was not to fall under 
Teutonic discipline. There remained only 
the questions, Can Germany be defeated? 
Is it to be a drawn battle 1 Shall the peace 
23 



THE GEEMAN EEPUBLIC 

be a mere truce or permanent? What can 
or should be done to those responsible for 
the catastrophe 1 What is likely to happen 
within Germany? 

The course of the war thenceforth was 
in line with this general conclusion. Gradu- 
ally the Teutonic forces became relatively 
weaker — weaker more in economic re- 
sources than in men and material for war- 
making — gradually the allied forces grew 
relatively stronger. When the high tide 
of German success had passed in 1915 
without victories of a decisive character 
the ending became painfully apparent. It 
was only a question of time when the Teu- 
tonic hordes would be checkmated; when 
exclusion from the sea would have its in- 
evitable effect; when, instead of conquer- 
ing the world, they would have their backs 
against their frontiers in staunch, stub- 
born defense of Fatherland. 

It so happened. After violent, heroic 
24 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

fighting at many points along the great 
fronts, after temporary success first for 
one side and then for the other, after am- 
ple demonstration on a thousand bloody 
fields that in our day brute force, valor, 
courage, sacrifice backed by modern or- 
ganization and wielding modern instru- 
ments of slaughter and destruction are fu- 
tile agents of human purpose — futile be- 
cause inevitably met and checked by other 
brute force, valor, organization, weapons, 
of equal strength; after half the human 
race had been plunged into prolonged an- 
guish to prove that mankind has developed 
to a stage where physical violence has lost 
all its former savage power to determine 
human rivalries — 

After all this had been made so pain- 
fully plain as to be clear even to the pas- 
sion-inflamed eyes of the rival chieftains, 
stubborn, savage fighting pride forced 
them to keep up the insensate shambles 
25 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

along the Meuse, the Yser, elsewhere, till 
at length all mankind, filled with horrified 
disgust, could only cry "Shame!" 

After still more slaughter and shambles 
reaction finally came in exhaustion and 
despair. At last the weary warriors 
paused for breath and settled down to an- 
other period of grim, gripping deadlock, 
glaring at one another from their caves 
and trenches. Neither made attack, both 
realizing its futility. 

All this time there was much talk of 
peace. Again and again the Germans 
made informal overtures, announced that 
the door was open, they were ready to 
treat. But there was no peace. There 
were no formal negotiations or moves for 
peace. Disappointed, the world looked 
sadly forward to another winter of the bit- 
ter, desperate struggle of ruin and exhaus- 
tion. The end was not in sight, not to be 
seen upon the troubled surface. Were the 
26 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

mad tribes determined to exterminate one 
another? 

An Armistice 

Suddenly, without warning or even 
rumor running ahead, to the world's 
great surprise and joy came official an- 
nouncement that a general armistice 
had been arranged between all the con- 
tending armies for a period of three 
months. 

Formal negotiation of peace was ex- 
pected to follow immediately. 

But it did not come. Week after week 
passed, with no sign of official overture 
from any of the capitals of the belligerent 
powers. Proffers of mediation were re- 
pelled by both sides. The troops were 
merely hibernating on all the long fronts. 
Paralysis seemed to have stricken the con- 
tenders. Why do they not do something? 
What is the meaning of this armistice? 
27 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

How was it brought about, and why do 
they not make peace? 

These were the mysteries which plagued 
all mankind with prolonged, painful doubt 
and curiosity. 



28 



CHAPTER III 

THE MIGHTIEST MOVEMENT OP THE WAR 

All this time there was in motion the 
mightiest movement of the war. A mo- 
mentous, decisive battle was being fought, 
and won. An irresistible force, unherald- 
ed in official bulletins, undescribed in un- 
official reports, was bearing down upon the 
very center of the field of battle, coming 
from a mysterious source, moving in a 
mysterious way, advancing with the slow- 
ness of an avalanche, but, like the ava- 
lanche, crushing, crumbling everything 
that stood in its way. 

We know now what the impatient world 

did not then know, or at least only vaguely 

suspected, that this mighty movement had 

really started long before, had brought on 

29 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

the armistice, produced the prolonged 
pause, palsied the hand of slaughter and 
destruction, and was now bringing the end 
slowly but surely nearer. 

It had begun with faint, vague, misty 
murmurings in a few German minds. 
Slowly the whisperings had gained defi- 
niteness, resolved themselves into form, 
gradually the number of men to whom 
they came grew larger and larger. The 
growth and spread must have been slow 
indeed, for all habit and inherited and in- 
culcated posture of mind, all instinct, tra- 
dition, were against them. Loyalty to 
tribe, dominant sense of duty, long sup- 
pressed all outward expression of these in- 
ner murmurings. Passion to win, pride of 
race and tribe, dogged courage in adversity 
and disappointment, long kept tongues 
still. The mighty movement had begun its 
work silently within silent atoms. 

Multitudes of soldiers found sleep in the 
30 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

trenches, the caves, the camps only after 
long hours of silent wrestling with their 
mysterious inner unrest, with the ill-de- 
fined stirrings of their spirit, rising in the 
morning with the irritating agitation still 
there, but not to be spoken of, not to be 
confessed as a weakness or spiritual sin, 
never knowing that the comrades who lay 
alongside were passing through a like ex- 
perience. At home multitudes of men and 
women, by day patriots as of old, devoted 
as always to the tribe, giving all they could 
give, enduring all that the circumstance 
and cruelty of war brought to them to en- 
dure, speaking no word of the specter of 
doubt that had unbidden found lodgment 
within them, went to bed, there long to 
wrestle with and try to understand or eject 
the unwelcome intruder. 

The mighty movement was under way, 
the law of gravitation was stirring within 
the atoms of the great mass. Still, all was 
31 



THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC 

silence, no word was spoken. Discipline, 
habit, pride, duty, mass-mentality, and all 
the persistence and stubbornness of these, 
for a long time suppressed articulation, 
but no power on earth could suppress med- 
itation. 

The Irrepressible Inner Something 

For a brief interval of time artificial 
force may apparently turn the law of grav- 
itation upside down, but omnipotence can- 
not keep it there. It will right itself. 

The law of gravitation had begun its 
work within the German people. They did 
not consciously summon it, it summoned it- 
self. They did not welcome it, tried to put 
it out, but it stayed in spite of them. 

A highly developed, cultured, rational, 
intellectual people of modern times may 
retain if they wish an inherited organiza- 
tion of mediaeval tribalism, call themselves 
a tribe, be proud that they are a tribe, con- 
32 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

tent to stay a tribe, glory in the combined 
and unified physical prowess of their 
tribe — 

But they cannot be a tribe when trem- 
blings of the earth or shock or stress set 
in motion the internal law of gravitation 
and put them to the crucial test. 

Their revered and most high chief, given 
them by the heavens or through accident 
of nature, may command the person, the 
property, the life of the willing vassal, but 
he cannot command for all time the vas- 
sal's inner something which we know as 
mind and conscience. The vassal may with 
glad loyalty yield to the chief his prop- 
erty, his person, his life, but even he can- 
not yield the mysterious inner something, 
because though in and of him it is beyond 
his control and within the control of the 
law of gravitation. 

Modern culture and intellectual develop- 
ment have given modern man a strong 
33 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

will, but it has also placed within him 
something stronger than his will. It is a 
mysterious but inextinguishable ferment 
of the intellect, an inexplicable, insistent, 
irrepressible, incessant hunger for knowl- 
edge, for truth, and for right in the light 
of that truth. 

This is Moral Force, the very essence of 
civilization. 

Nothing in earth or in the heavens, not 
imperial power nor military authority, nor 
tribal feeling and ingrained habit of 
thought and discipline however strong, nor 
passion, pride, hatred, selfishness, mass- 
obsession or the law of attraction and cor- 
relation among the mental units, could for- 
ever paralyze the German intellect, kill the 
German conscience, permanently reverse 
the magnetic needle of the German soul 
and keep it pointing to the negative pole of 
error against its fundamental gravitation 
to the positive pole of truth. 
34 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

The great force, shocked into movement, 
roused by the crash of war, could never 
again be stopped. 

When New Life Budded Forth in the Land 
of the Tribe 

It did not come swiftly; it was not an 
earthquake ; not a violent, sudden upheav- 
al, not a furious storm rushing violently 
to its destination. 

Rather, it was the soil of a fair land. 
Now it is winter there. All is frozen, hard, 
harsh, austere, unhopeful, seemingly 
changeless. There is no softness, no green 
thing, no bud, or blossom, no warmth, no 
life. It is cold. 

Down in the soil, an inherent part of it, 
are mysterious little seeds. No one knows 
just what they are, how they got there. 
They do not know themselves, they are un- 
conscious of their glorious future. Over- 
head the cosmos, not more mysterious in, 
35 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

all its eternal vastness, its infinitude in 
time and space, the cosmos with its mighty- 
procession of the seasons. The seeds wait. 

The winter is long and dreary. Will it 
never end? Can it be much longer en- 
dured? "We the people of this fair but 
frozen land are cold, we suffer, children 
are suffering, women are suffering and 
waiting in the land, all are hungry for 
warmth, all are weary, all are cold. Shall 
we never be warm again? 

Hour by hour and day by day the sun 
comes nearer. His approach is well-nigh 
imperceptible; hope itself remains blind, 
frozen. But he comes. He is inevitable. 
No power can stop him. We know not why 
he comes, or how, but he comes. He is 
already near. 

Now the earth gets warmer. First in 

favored spots, then everywhere. Now 

there is a little sunshine each day; later 

much more sunshine. The cold goes away. 

36 



THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC 

A few of the small seeds send forth tiny, 
timid sprouts. More join them, then more 
and more. Humble plants, coy in lowly 
corners, are encouraged by finer, more de- 
veloped, richer, luxuriant flowers. Soon 
the country side is all green. With 
warmth come courage, buoyancy, fullness, 
expression. Majestic trees, the upstand- 
ing, strong characters of the fast changing 
landscape, clothe their bald limbs with 
color, action, life, saying to all smaller ad- 
venturers, "Be not afraid, the winter has 
passed, this is the summer of our content." 

Like this came the great awakening 
which changed the history of the human 
race. 

It was inevitable. 

It was in the soil, in the little insidious 
seeds, in the law of gravitation, in the soul 
of the German land, in the eternal sun of 
the heavens which panoply civilization. 

There was no power anywhere great 
37 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

enough to stop the seasons and keep it 
always winter along the Rhine, the Elbe, 
the Weser, no power anywhere great 
enough to reverse the law of gravitation in 
the moral force of a highly developed 
people. 



38 



CHAPTER IV 

OPENED EYES 

Abtictjlation soon followed meditation. 
Courage came to individuals with the 
warmth of strengthening, insistent convic- 
tion. When German began speaking to 
German of his doubts and fears the sun 
crossed the equator — it was spring in the 
land. 

German began speaking openly to Ger- 
man early in the year 1916. All was not 
well in the military field. Physical vio- 
lence, formidable as it was, had not car- 
ried the tribe far along the road to glory 
or gain. German blood and German re- 
sources seemed to be pouring through a 
sieve; that could not go on forever. Val- 
orous as were the armies, they made small 
39 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

definite and permanent headway. Russia 
was a huge elastic mass, not very hard, but 
immense, whose surface only Teuton skill 
and energy could dent here and there and 
then fall back in the rebound, as much hurt 
as hurting. France proved to be a stone 
wall of nationalism as courageous, valor- 
ous, stubborn, stolid, resistant, as Ger- 
many might have built with much the same 
material, and the wall bristled with thorns 
and was alive with vipers. England was 
a huge bulldog, slow, muddling, inefficient, 
stupid at times, but plucky, hanging on, a 
bulldog always, and always set square and 
stubborn in the Teuton path. 

Above all, England was master of the 
seas. 

With eyes a little ways opened by much 
painful thinking the sons of the tribe be- 
gan to get glimpses of the actual state of 
things. If their leaders had set out to con- 
quer the world that conquest must still be 
40 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

far away. For the world that their lead- 
ers had promised was to be theirs seemed 
now a vast space outside an iron ring that 
shut them and Germany in by land and 
sea. 

Though they fought bravely on and 
pressed with all their might against the 
barrier, they used their perceptions as well 
as their brute strength, their eyes as well 
as their fists, and they could not see, much 
as they hoped to see, the ring receding or 
going to pieces. 

At times it seemed to them to be draw- 
ing closer in, getting thicker, tighter, 
stronger. Little Belgium, a part of 
France, a corner of elastic Russia, the pig 
pastures of Serbia, did not form a large 
part of the great world in the eyes of those 
who remembered their geography — one of 
the minor inconveniences of trying to make 
true mediaeval spearmen out of vassals 
who had all been to school. 
41 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

And the eyes of the most thoughtful and 
long-visioned could see, at least with the 
mind's eye could sense, another ring out- 
side the one of iron and steel, intangible 
but immensely more significant, the outer 
ring supporting the inner one, making the 
inner unbreakable, impregnable, eternal. 

This dense, dark, ominous outer circle 
was the public opinion of mankind. 

Confinement within a relatively narrow 
space, steel-bordered, and beyond the steel 
a great frowning cloud composed of mil- 
lions on millions of people who have placed 
a judgment upon you and stand ready to 
apprehend you and send you back to your 
little narrow space if you are so lucky as 
to break through the wall of steel, is sure 
to stimulate reflection. Thus shut in one 
may fight, beat against the barriers, rush 
to and fro like a wild beast in his cage, 
claw, strike, bite, growl, show fangs, but 
in the inevitable pauses, in the stops for 
42 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

breath and sleep, one thinks, and thinks — 
analyzes, inquires. 

To many Germans, by nature medita- 
tive, analytical, prone to face facts, seek 
truth, save when high authority forbade — 
and now even high authority could not in- 
terpose — to many who remembered the re- 
cent days in which all the lands and all the 
seas were open to them, all the world gave 
them welcome, when there were no bar- 
riers anywhere, no wall of steel or cloud 
of frowns, this small space they were now 
fighting in seemed more like a world prison 
than a world throne. 

The Inevitable Interrogation 

At length the men in field gray even 
while hurling themselves at the word of 
command upon the strongholds of the foe, 
facing futile slaughter where futile slaugh- 
ter had come to them so many times be- 
fore, began asking "Why?" 
43 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Men and women at home, mourning their 
dead, tenderly caring the torn and rent 
wrecks of sons and fathers sent them by 
train loads from the righting fronts, be- 
gan asking "Why?" 

German intelligence, so long held in com- 
plete subordination to tribal loyalty and 
discipline, seeing and feeling the iron ring 
and the other band of frowning cloud 
round about the land, began asking 
"Why!" "Is this the conquest of the 
world we were promised?" "What has 
become of the invincibility of our arms we 
were taught to believe in as in Fatherland 
itself?" "Where is the infallible genius 
of our high command that was to make our 
task a short and easy one?" 

As had been inevitable from the very 
first, some time or other, the Germans 
were now ceasing to be mere tribesmen. 

Contentment with any sort of explana- 
tion of any sort of phenomena, or no ex- 
44 



THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC 

planation at all, blind obedience without 
vision, brute strength thrown into the 
bludgeon without the brain asking ques- 
tions, is of the essence of pure tribalism — 
a real tribe cannot exist without it. 

The German people had begun their nec- 
essary and inevitable ask of learning that 
they are a highly civilized people and not 
a feudal tribe in their relations and respon- 
sibilities to the remainder of the world in 
which they live, had taken in hand the 
primer of the lesson they must learn that 
as a member of the human society they 
must conform to that society's moral law 
or suffer the penalty of revolt against it. 

They were awakening from the decep- 
tion they had put upon themselves that 
because they preferred tribalism in their 
housekeeping, and found it worked well 
there, they had a right to try to impose it 
upon other families, who wished it not. 

The awakening could not come as long 
45 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

as they remained at home and busied them- 
selves with domestic affairs. It could not 
come now that they were out in the world 
trying to ram their system down the 
throats of their neighbors as long as all 
was going well with that rash adventure. 
"With success, with achievement, with tri- 
umph, action has its auto-intoxication. 
Masses of men like individuals rush for- 
ward like the racer, blood hot in the brain, 
muscles and nerves quivering, nothing in 
the spirit but feverish flashes of getting 
there, beating, winning. 

It is rather fine to race, to fight, to strug- 
gle, to feel the thrill of life, action, success. 

But when the check comes, defeat, dis- 
appointment, adversity, desperation, then 
comes meditation, the blood cools, the in- 
tellect resumes its normal function, not all 
of this body is muscle and sinew, there is 
something stronger than mere physical 
force, something better. 
46 



THE GEEMAN REPUBLIC 

It was a hot race, a fierce fight, but so 
costly, so ghastly, so many have fallen, we 
sacrifice so much, suffer so much; and the 
folk at home, and the future? 

"What are we racing and fighting and 
falling and suffering for? What could we 
have gained had we won! 

And what is the meaning of all those 
walls and rings about us out there? The 
inner one we can understand — that is jeal- 
ousy of Germany, that is the determination 
of our envious, wicked rivals to crush us, 
destroy us. 

But the other one, that great dark cloud 
outside which seems to shut the sun and 
the stars from our view and stand between 
us and the heavens ; say, comrade, what is 
the meaning of that? 

It soon became apparent that German 
civilization, morality, intellectuality, man- 
hood, German innate and inexorable search 
47 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

for truth and right, were not of such 
stuff as a true mediseval tribe is made 
of. 

Slowly but surely, irresistibly, came the 
awakening. His obsession at an end, re- 
covered from the mass-hypnotic state his 
fervent patriotism had plunged him into, 
once more a human being of self-starting, 
self-steering reasoning faculties, again a 
true son of culture to whom the truth and 
the right are as indispensable as air for 
lungs and food for stomach, his feet once 
set by imperious inner command upon the 
path that must lead to ultimate solution 
and remedy, with characteristic thorough- 
ness and courage the German went to the 
end of the trail. 

Once aroused, he flinched at nothing, 
faced everything. He analyzed not only 
all the facts pertaining to the cause and 
origin of the great tragedy, but all the 
events, personages, principles, effects as- 
48 



THE GERMAN BEPUBLIC 

sociated with its progress. He dissected 
not only the catastrophe itself, but the sys- 
tem which had made the tragedy possible. 
And in the end he dissected himself, his 
relation to that system, and that system's 
relations to the great band of cloud out- 
side the ring of iron and steel surrounding 
him and his land and his people. 

The awakening had come; it was sum- 
mer again along the Rhine, the Elbe, the 
Weser. 

The best because most revealing chron- 
icles of this great movement of a truly 
great people in one of the greatest crises 
known to the history of mankind are found 
in the innumerable German writings, ad- 
dresses, publicly adopted resolutions, es- 
says, and, at the last, certain historic doc- 
uments and state papers of the pregnant 
period of the German Political Reforma- 
tion. 

49 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Future historians will write many mas- 
sive and dignified volumes descriptive of 
the events of this period, ranking them in 
importance in the history of the human 
race with the dawn of Christianity, the 
discovery of America, the invention of 
printing, the religious Reformation, the 
French Revolution, the founding of the 
American Republic. 

But it is doubtful if any other narrative 
could be more eloquent of the process and 
spirit of the regeneration of the German 
people than the simple, earnest outpour- 
ings of the Germans themselves as they 
emerged from the trial of fire and suffer- 
ing and sacrifice, strengthened, purified, 
uplifted, asserted their manhood right to 
be a nation in all things and not a feudal 
tribe in anything, gave ample and freely 
accepted atonement for all error, and not 
only were able to resume their high full 
fellowship in the family of nations, but 
50 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

led all the nations in conferring upon man- 
kind one of the greatest blessings since the 
creation. 



51 



CHAPTER V 

THE GEKMAN POLITICAL BEPOEMATION 

(Extracts from ivritings, addresses and 
documents published in Germany near 
the end of the Great War) 

We German people were told by you, 
our government, which we believed with all 
our souls, we could implicitly trust in all 
things, that the Great "War was forced 
upon us, that our enemies, jealous of our 
rising commercial and political power, had 
wickedly leagued together for the purpose 
of destroying us. 

We were told by you in high authority, 
upon whom we depended for all informa- 
tion and for all guidance in matters with- 
out our domestic circle, as children depend 
upon their fathers for tidings of the great 
52 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

world beyond their home, that the enemy 
was prepared and massed for attack upon 
us, that Russian troops had already 
crossed our frontier, that France was 
springing to the blow, but that England, 
though contriving with secret intrigue to 
set the others upon us, was herself too 
craven to fight, and would stay smug and 
self-satisfied in peace and security. 

All this we believed, believed because 
you told us, because you had all sources 
of information, because we trusted you. 

In the little that we were permitted to 
know of the Serbian crisis we had been 
unable to see that the welfare of our nation 
was seriously involved, that any cause ex- 
isted for our intervention. 

As you well know, as all the world should 
know, we, the German people, had always 
looked upon our army and navy as mere 
protectors of the nation, and for that pur- 
pose we had always wished them to be 
53 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

strong and efficient. We had been taught 
to believe, and did believe, that the surest 
way to avert attack was to be so strong 
that our enemies, if we had any, would not 
dare measure strength with us. For this 
reason, and no other, we were heart and 
soul for a strong military establishment, 
for this we paid our high taxes, gave our 
military service. 

A People of and for Peace 

"When outsiders criticized us as a mil- 
itaristic nation, led by war-lords, railed at 
our mailed fist and rattling of sabres, and 
predicted that some day we should start 
a war of conquest upon our neighbors, we 
only smiled and were serene in our knowl- 
edge that you, our leaders, and we, the 
people, were at one in holding that our 
military establishment was for defense 
only and was never to be used in wanton 
attack upon others. 

54 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

The first of July, 1914, war was far from 
our thoughts. Not one in a thousand of us 
had even fear that we were soon to be in- 
volved in a mighty conflict in which the 
very life of the nation should be at stake. 

When you told us a few weeks later that 
we were about to be attacked and war was 
therefore upon us* your words came to us 
like thunderbolts from a clear sky. 

Surprised and amazed as we were, not 
one of us in all the land had a thought of 
questioning your wisdom, your sincerity, 
your accuracy of information and state- 
ment. We knew your devotion to the best 
and highest interests of the nation, we 
knew you would not yourselves bring on a 
war, we knew you would take good care 
never to plunge us into war as long as it 
was possible with honor to avert war. 

You summoned us to defense of Father- 
land, and you know, all the world knows, 
how with all our strength and all our souls 
55 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

we responded to the call. We are proud 
of the confidence and loyalty we gave you. 
We are proud of our unity of feeling and 
action, of all the sacrifices we have made 
upon the altar of country, and we have 
reason to believe the neutral peoples, even 
our enemies, do not blame us German peo- 
ple for what we did. 

For a long time our patriotic spirit, our 
whole-hearted confidence in the fidelity of 
you who spoke and acted for the country, 
forbade us to harbor even the faintest 
thought that you might have erred. For 
us it was only to respond, to obey, to fight, 
follow, not to analyze, question, criticize. 

Those who looked on from afar, with 
vision clearer than ours could be in the 
midst of conflict, saw what we were blind 
to, that this state of mind could not forever 
continue among us ; that it is not in human 
nature, not in the natures of grown men, 
modern, cultured, self-reliant, endowed 
56 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

with eyes to see and brains to reason, to 
accept indefinitely any dictum whatsoever 
without inquiry into its inherent truth. 

It so happened. After a long time 
doubts did creep unbidden into our minds. 
They came not from any information or 
explanation you were kind enough to give 
us, but through that which we as observ- 
ing and thinking men came to know of our- 
selves — when we saw that we were sur- 
rounded by an iron ring of enemies and 
outside that hard circle a still greater, 
stronger and more ominous one, the ad- 
verse opinion of civilization. 

Instinct then told us something was 
wrong. There must have been something 
connected with the cause of the war, the 
great question of moral responsibility 
therefor, which the outside world under- 
stood better than we did, perhaps because 
the outside world had access to informa- 
tion which had been withheld from us. 
57 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

That is what the outer ring told us, in that 
way the outer ring started us thinking. 
By the inner ring and the outer together 
we knew the war was not won, as you had 
so often told us, the only trouble being, 
according to your version, that the foe was 
too stupid and stubborn to know when he 
was beaten. By all these signs we read 
that even if we were to win the war on its 
physical side there was something higher 
than that, something so far beyond we 
could never reach it or overcome it with 
our armies, however victorious, that the 
more we won in war the less we should 
have worth having when the peace came. 

Closing German Eyes with German Blood 

You in high authority must have discov- 
ered the presence among us of these spec- 
ters of doubt and mistrust almost as soon 
as we ourselves were conscious of their ex- 
istence. You did not wish to have our 
58 



THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC 

minds work without orders from you, you 
did not want our eye-lids to lift of their 
own free motion. You must have reasoned 
that inasmuch as we at the front and the 
people at home had been quiet and pliant 
enough so long as all was going well in 
the field, the best way to expel these un- 
comfortable spectral visitors from our 
minds was to dazzle us with some sensa- 
tional military triumph. 

And so you ordered us to take the ene- 
my's greatest stronghold, his well-nigh im- 
pregnable positions. We see now that 
your aim could not have been based purely 
upon military considerations. If it had 
been you would have made your attack on 
positions less strong, where were better 
chances of success, less certainty of ghast- 
ly loss. You would have sought the ene- 
my's weakest, not his strongest point, 
where the odds were heavily against us, 
and where, if beaten, he could retire to 
59 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

other positions now made almost as strong 
and invite us to come and take them, too, 
at his own bloody price of five to one. 

No, yon sought a spectacular success 
that should set the flags flying all through 
Fatherland, rouse anew the popular en- 
thusiasm, drown thinking in shouting, 
smother cerebration in celebration. 

You fed us by the hundreds of thousands 
to the hells along the Meuse. You flung 
great columns of us into the fire-swept 
open there to crumple up and lie seething 
and moaning on the red ground. Then you 
flung other columns after the first, to crum- 
ple in their turn. You smeared the ground 
for many miles about with the dismem- 
bered fragments of men and the unburied, 
rotting bodies of our sons and brothers. 
You filled long trains with maimed, blind- 
ed, broken, ruined men. 

You tried to close our eyes with our own 
blood. 

60 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

But you did not succeed. We wiped 
away the blood, and the bitter, bitter tears, 
and then opened our eyes still wider. 

The Great, Fateful Deception 

If you could deceive us as to the course 
of the war, strive to continue the deception 
by stopping our eyes with our own blood, 
there must be something back of that which 
you are also keeping from us, about which 
you had deceived us. If you had told us 
the truth as to the cause of the war there 
would be no need of telling us anything 
but truth as to its course. If it were pure- 
ly a war of German defense, of keeping 
the invader out of Fatherland, Verdun, the 
shambles, would be unnecessary. 

Our fears and doubts stirred, we sought 
for ourselves the facts as to the cause of 
the war, the facts which you never gave 
us, which we never before sought because 
we were too busy killing and being killed 
61 



THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC 

through our trust that you had reported 
the truth to us and therefore inquiry into 
the facts was not needed. 

And now, after thorough search for the 
truth for ourselves, we say to you our con- 
clusion is the war did not come because 
our enemies were about to attack us. We 
find no evidence in support of that. We 
find that not one of our enemies was pre- 
pared for war, or wanted war. No enemy 
had crossed our frontier. 

All the governments of the countries 
with which we are now at war tried to keep 
the peace. All sought adjustment of the 
Serbian dispute by the usual peaceful 
means. Even our Teutonic ally, whose 
quarrel it was, not ours, was willing to con- 
fer with Europe upon a question which 
had become European, much more than 
local. The only government that refused 
conference was the one which you con- 
trolled. 

62 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

In the first account you gave us of the 
cause of the war you said it was Russia 
that must be held responsible, Russia was 
determined to attack, had crossed our 
frontier, we must rally to beat back the 
Slav peril. In your second account, given 
after England had joined the alliance 
against us, though at first you had said 
England would not fight, it was England 
who was responsible — England, jealous, 
wicked, determined to crush her rival, fo- 
menting and intriguing war upon us. 

We have reviewed the historical evi- 
dence of that episode, and we find, as all 
neutral students have found, that instead 
of wanting war, for which she was wholly 
unprepared save on the sea, England was 
doing all in her power to avert war, of- 
fered everything she could offer, proposed 
everything that gave promise, under her 
leadership Russia and Prance were eager 
to confer with all the powers to keep the 
63 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

peace, Austria was not unwilling — you 
alone stood out. 

England said to you if you could not ap- 
prove the particular suggestion she had 
offered, propose something on your own 
account, some formula for keeping the 
peace, and pledged you that if that were 
upset by Russia and France, England 
would let them stand alone in the conse- 
quences. A word from you, a single word, 
involving no loss of pride or dignity, but 
adding greatly to your honor and prestige, 
would have brought conference and kept 
the peace. You did not speak that word. 

Peace or war rested with you — you 
chose war. 

If you were yourselves deceived, if you 
were self-misled despite your diplomacy, 
your spies, your secret service, all your 
sources of information; if you believed 
Russia was about to attack us and had 
crossed our frontier when she was not 
64 



THE GEBMAN REPUBLIC 

meditating attack and had not crossed our 
frontier; if you believed England was in- 
triguing for war despite all her efforts for 
peace which common sense and the judg- 
ment of the remainder of the world have 
found based upon sincerity, if you feared 
England was playing some trick upon you 
when she asked you to arrange the confer- 
ence in your own way and offered to stand 
with you against all who did not come in; 
if you were deceived as to all this, despite 
all this believed our enemies were forcing 
war upon us, your government was so 
grossly incompetent as to be unworthy re- 
sponsibility for the destiny of a great 
people. 

There are blunders worse than crimes. 

But you were not deceived. You knew 
why the war came. 

It came because you willed it, because 
you wanted it for purposes of your own, 
and not for the good of the German people, 
65 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

wanted it for ends which you knew the 
German people would not approve and 
which if known could not command hearty 
and enthusiastic German support. 

And so you deceived us. 

You appealed to our patriotism in the 
one way that was sure to rouse our spirit 
to the highest pitch, for defense of Father- 
land. 

Words cannot tell the bitterness that is 
in us as we discover we have been shedding 
our blood and that of our neighbors, suf- 
fering and sacrificing and inflicting suffer- 
ing and sacrifice, plunging a continent into 
desolation, bringing down upon our heads 
the condemnation of all mankind — for a 
lie. 

As Empty and Fruitless as a Dream 

Why did you deceive us? What was to 
be gained for Germany? What accretion 
of real and lasting value 1 
66 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Moral considerations for the moment 
aside, and assuming our complete military 
success, what did you think you could gain 
for Germany, and hold, that would be 
worth to us as a people, in promotion of 
our prosperity and happiness, a millionth 
part of the cost of getting it and holding 
it? 

Was it your plan to conquer other na- 
tions, subjugate or humble them, annex all 
or a part of their territory, extend our 
political power over all or a part of their 
people? 

If so, you had no right to embark upon 
such a venture, plunging into it all the 
strength and resources of the people, make 
us your co-partners furnishing all the cap- 
ital and all the service, without taking us 
into your confidence, without letting us 
know what we were doing, what struggling 
for, what profit was to be ours for our tre- 
mendous investment? 
67 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

You failed to take us into your confi- 
dence, worked a deception upon us, be- 
cause you knew full well the German peo- 
ple would never give their approval to a 
war of conquest. 

You had no right to assume we would 
approve such a war if only it were suc- 
cessful, and that as it was to be success- 
ful, the deception would work no injustice 
upon us. 

You had no right to think, because we 
have been content with a paternal govern- 
ment, because we have been obedient as 
children, because we have given trust and 
loyalty without question and without re- 
serve, that you could treat us as if we were 
vassals, mere hewers of wood and carriers 
of water in the tribe, spear carriers, 
bludgeon bearers, cave men. 

We are the sons and daughters of civ- 
ilization and culture, of thought, philoso- 
phy, art, literature, science, history. While 
68 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

we knew little or nothing of what was go- 
ing on in the foreign relations of our gov- 
ernment, we did know, and long have 
known, for our philosophy, our culture, 
our history have told us, and we presumed 
you knew also even better than we, that in 
modern civilization conquest of other peo- 
ples as a means of nation-building is as 
empty and fruitless as a dream. It belongs 
to an age which the world has left behind. 
It yields neither permanence nor profit, 
brings neither prosperity nor honor. 

Was it for such a nightmare as this that 
you deceived us into years of struggle with 
our neighbors, made us the victims of our 
patriotism, planted a million of our sons 
in fresh, futile graves, doomed countless 
more to live hereafter blind, torn, crippled, 
wrecked, tortured? 



69 



CHAPTER VI 

A PLACE IN THE SUN? OE IN A MADHOUSE? 

Ok, sought you Germany's "Place in the 
Sun?" her right to colonial and commer- 
cial expansion, to freedom of the seas? 

These jingling phrases have long rung in 
our ears. They were not unpleasant. We 
rather liked them, certainly did not reject 
them. At times we even echoed them, with- 
our knowing or caring much what they 
really signified, if anything. "We were 
prosperous, content, hard at work, happy. 
What harm was done if in the absence of 
actual political activities such as some of 
our neighbors enjoy we Germans made 
toys of catch-phrases and tossed them 
about for our passing amusement? They 
were not a serious part of the life and 
aspirations of a practical, hard-headed 
70 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

people, they formed no national policy, 
they gave you no mandate. 

Our place in the sun? Is it for this chi- 
mera that we have been shedding our 
blood? Was it your will that we should 
club and kill, hack our way through to 
greater commercial activity abroad, redden 
the seas that more German ships might sail 
them, pound our way with great guns into 
more foreign markets, ram culture with 
bayonets down the throats of primitive 
peoples? 

If it is for these jingling catch-words, 
these shibboleths of emptiness, that we 
have been righting, tell us what they mean, 
for we do not know. 

We do know where we Germans stood 
in the great world when you willed this war 
upon us. We know only too well where we 
stand now. 

Then we had no enemies among man- 
kind. 

71 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Now we have no friends. 

That is your achievement. 

Three years ago no other people were 
more respected throughout civilization 
than we. Wherever Germans went they 
carried with them the repute of a well- 
ordered household, friendly feeling at 
home toward all neighbors which found 
ready response abroad. They took with 
them dignity of character, sincerity, well 
trained and universally recognized effi- 
ciency. With these they found welcome, 
made way, won confidence, in many lands 
and a thousand fields of endeavor. 

In the great American continent thou- 
sands of our blood had found homes and 
happiness. No other imported stock was 
more welcome. No other citizens of alien 
descent were better liked. Notwithstand- 
ing ties of blood and sympathetic racial 
traits and tendencies not even the English 
found more, and possibly they found a lit- 
72 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

tie less, social and commercial hospitality. 

In France, despite prejudices growing 
out of relatively recent historical happen- 
ings, many thousands of our people were 
finding homes, prosperity, and if not the 
warmest social welcome, ample justice, fair 
dealing, protection, opportunity. For one 
Frenchman living and doing business in 
Germany a thousand Germans were living 
and thriving in France. 

In Russia our financial and commercial 
envoys found not only fair and fruitful 
fields, but they had built up there, even in 
the highest circles, a distinct and influen- 
tial factor in the national life. 

In England itself, in British possessions 
and colonies, in Italy, everywhere, like 
conditions prevailed. Nowhere were gates 
closed to us, no artificial obstacles were 
placed in our path, everywhere we were 
free to compete, to strive, to adventure, to 
achieve, to prosper. 

73 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Freedom of the Seas? 

Three years ago smoke from German 
funnels darkened the skies over all the 
Seven Seas. German merchant marine 
were to be seen in all the ports of the earth. 
Nowhere were prohibitory or onerous 
duties laid against them. In the ports of 
England itself, and France, our ships plied 
their trade regularly and successfully in 
open, fair competition with ships English 
and French. 

Our great fleets of modern passenger 
vessels probably carried more American 
passengers to and from the ports of 
France and England than their French 
and English competitors. 

You have lately told us we could never 
have freedom of the seas till England's 
naval domination were stopped, that 
England's jealousy and malice are rocks 
in the course of our over-sea expan- 
74 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

sion which we must blast out with the 
dynamite and gun-powder of physical 
force. 

But three years ago our merchant ma- 
rine were seen in all the ports of British 
possessions and colonies. Our flag was 
to be seen flying side by side with its Eng- 
lish rival in the harbors not only of Eng- 
land itself, but "of Egypt, other parts of 
Africa under British control, India, Cey- 
lon, Australia, Hongkong, New Zealand, 
British isles of the sea. 

If there had been but one great naval 
fleet in all the world, and that one Ger- 
man, under your supreme control, the seas 
could not have been more free to our mer- 
chant ships than they were when you 
willed this war upon us. 

Colonies? Territorial expansion over- 
sea 1 Is that what we fight for ? 

Extensive colonies we had. Where are 
they now? 

75 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

And when we had them you know as well 
as we that our rule in them was not suc- 
cessful, brought us neither honor nor gain, 
they were to us a national burden, not a 
national blessing. 

And you know, and all the world knows, 
that as colonial administrators we have 
not been successful simply because there 
we have applied the spirit of Germany the 
military machine and not the spirit of the 
true Germany, the educator, builder, moral 
leader. 

Both our philosophy and our experience 
show that all our success out among the 
peoples of the world is won with service, 
gentleness, fairness, helpfulness, under- 
standing of human nature — characteristic 
Germanism — while all our failures, all our 
disappointments, all our disrepute, have 
come through too much of your cult of au- 
tocratic military dictatorship and mechan- 
ical rule of iron. 

76 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

"We have learned our lesson, even if yon 
have not learned yours. 

The German smile, not the German 
sword, wins its way throughout the world. 

The best German philosopher, guide and 
friend is Kant, not Krupp. 

Germany's World-Empire That Was 

The supremely critical moment in the 
history of the German nation came three 
years ago when you refused all appeals 
from your equals to say the one word that 
meant peace, and unleashed the dogs of 
war. 

"Where did we stand then as a na- 
tion? 

WTiat was the most marked achievement 
of the genius of our people, worked out 
through the generations that had just 
passed? 

It is a simple, well-known, yet inspiring 
story of progress. 

77 



THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC 

From a relatively primitive pastoral 
people, delving almost wholly in the soil 
and the forest, we had rapidly become in- 
dustrial. 

We acquired skill in the arts, in chemis- 
try, fabrication, fashioning, contriving. 
From dealing only as a raw tribe with raw 
materials we learned to transmute the 
crude into the finished in countless attrac- 
tive and useful forms and sell our handi- 
work to all the world. 

In forty years our exports multiplied 
seven-fold. 

We had become one of the world's great- 
est workshops. 

A large and vital part of all our activi- 
ties, employment of a large and well re- 
munerated part of our national energies, 
were here — making in our workshops all 
sorts of things the world wanted and car- 
rying them away to the world's markets in 
German ships. Here our prosperity, our 
78 



THE GEKMAN KEPUBLIC 

growing wealth, our augmenting luxury, 
our future, were centered. 

Our empire consisted of the good opinion 
the remainder of the world held of us as 
makers, as merchants, its good opinion of 
our goods and wares, its confidence in us 
and them, our good relations with all man- 
kind. 

Everywhere our salesmen, merchants, 
bankers, were welcome. No discrimina- 
tions were made against them anywhere. 
They enjoyed world-wide confidence and 
respect. In the battle ground of human 
nature and the peaceful rivalry of open 
trade we Germans knew how to win friends 
and make our way. 

No port or market was closed to us. No 
political power was used to shut us out or 
impede our progress. Where imports and 
duties were levied we paid only what our 
rivals paid. 

Briton, perfidious Albion, which you had 
79 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

taught us to believe was so jealous of our 
success that she had determined to destroy 
us, shut us out of the sea, crush us with a 
war intrigued upon us — this wicked rival 
not only threw open her ports everywhere 
in the world to our ships and our wares 
but permitted great quantities of German 
goods to enter her home territory without 
the payment of a farthing of impost 
though all English goods entering Ger- 
many must pay high duties. 

This is where we stood three years ago. 
In the great world game of producing, 
contriving, combining, adapting, fabricat- 
ing, selling, in that greatest of all human 
rivalries beside which your pompous or 
mysterious diplomatic intrigues for some 
vague advantage or for some new shading 
of the will-o'-the-wisp balance of power are 
as the blind-man's buff of children — man- 
kind's manly rivalry of Quality and Price 
— we Germans were free, unfettered, f avor- 
80 



THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC 

getting friend-making, success-winning 
competitors. 

There were usefulness and prosperity, 
there permanence and growth, there a 
greater and greater future, for there the 
genius of our people was working along 
natural moral lines as a well-fitting and 
welcome factor in the evolution of society 
and the inter-play and correlation of hu- 
man endeavor. There we were going with 
the stream of civilization, not trying to 
make it go our way. 

That was an empire which required gen- 
erations of German industry and genius 
to build, a world-empire worth having, 
worth keeping. 

An Empire Won— and Lost 

Where stand we now since under your 

mediaeval leadership we have reverted to 

physical violence as the dominant factor 

in human affairs, tried with brute force to 

81 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

make the stream run uphill, contrived with 
almost the cunning of suicidal mania to set 
civilization and ourselves as things inim- 
ical and apart? 

No more German ships upon the seas. 

Few German traders in the world's 
marts. 

Few or no products of the great Ger- 
man workshop in the world's markets. 

Our workmen, engineers, salesmen, mar- 
iners, merchants, bankers, artisans, chem- 
ists, inventors, our men of skill, industry, 
commerce, productivity, are by your or- 
ders out there across the border trying to 
kill our neighbors and customers. 

Our shops and factories are closed or 
engaged in the making of munitions and 
weapons of slaughter. 

Our skill as inventors, chemists, con- 
trivers, is used not in the service of man- 
kind or for progress in the arts but in the 
destruction of our fellow men not alone 
82 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

by the conventional weapons but by means 
new and horrible and in too many in- 
stances beyond the pale even of war's 
none too scrupulous decencies. 

We have lost our markets, lost our cus- 
tomers, lost our friends, lost the good opin- 
ion of the world, lost all that we had striv- 
en for three generations to create. 

At one fell stroke you tumbled it all 
into ruins. 

You struck us down from the high place 
we had won among the world's peoples to 
the level of a barbaric, war-like tribe of the 
middle ages — to your own level. 

Was it a Place in the Sun you sought— 
or in a Madhouse 1 ? 



83 



CHAPTEE VII 

WHAT METHOD IN THE MADNESS f 

You whom we address are' the oligarchy 
of aristocrats and militarists who gath- 
ered about the sovereign and sought al- 
ways to be his chief councillors and 
through occupancy of that vantage ground 
gain power in the state. 

It being as plain as day that freedom of 
the seas, colonial expansion, a place in the 
sun, empire over the waters won by phys- 
ical force were mere nightmares, and since 
as more or less rational human beings you 
must have had some purpose in view when 
you willed the war, some definite objective, 
we are compelled to analyze your motives 
in the light of such evidence as we have 
been able to gather. Such analysis leads 
us to these conclusions: 
84 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Your underlying aim was not to promote 
the welfare of the German people but to 
perpetuate the power you had acquired 
near the seat of highest authority. In pur- 
suance thereof you made the sovereign's 
heir the figurehead if not the center of 
your cabal, thereby exerting a peculiar in- 
fluence over the sovereign himself and as- 
suring that if success attended your in- 
trigue your power should carry over from 
one regime to its successor. 

A part of your plan was to check the 
growth of all liberalism among the Ger- 
man people, particularly social democracy 
or any other development that tended to 
make the nation less tribal, more modern, 
and thereby minimizing or destroying your 
power. 

We do not deny your right as a factor 
in the state to seek repression by proper 
means of any growth deemed by you hurt- 
ful to the country. We do not deny the 
85 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

right of any political party to champion 
the policies in which it believes and to op- 
pose others. 

But we do deny the right of any party, 
caste, coterie, clique, oligarchy or author- 
ity whatsoever — and in this category we 
place the sovereign himself — to ruin Ger- 
many in order to make sure of absolute 
rule of what may be left of it. 

We deny the right of any power over us 
to seek repression of political discussion 
and political evolution within the country, 
by smothering them in the blood of the cit- 
izens shed in wanton attack upon their 
neighbors. 

There was no need of such desperate 
preventive. It is true that a nation is like 
an individual in that it cannot stand still. 
However well developed, highly organ- 
ized, it must go forward or backward, pro- 
gress or revert. We Germans were in the 
process of slow, cautious political growth, 
86 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

so slow, so cautious that all change was 
well-nigh imperceptible, unthreatening, 
without menace to you or yours. 

To stop that little growth you who want 
none at all, want none at all not because 
you think a little may hurt Germany, but 
because you fear it may in time hurt you, 
hurled us headlong backward two cen- 
turies. 

We do not believe because it is incred- 
ible, too monstrous, that you knew what 
you were doing, knew that you were driv- 
ing the nation to the fate which now has 
overtaken it. Certain it is you did not 
foresee that instead of brushing aside all 
that might possibly and eventually de- 
tract a little from the completeness of your 
ascendancy you were making it impossible 
for the nation to leave any power what- 
ever in your hands. 

In your madness there must have been 
some method, some dream at least of 
87 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

achieving something tangible that conld be 
made to pass as recompense to the people 
for the terrible price they had paid for it. 
We think we know what that was. 

Highwaymanry Hanged with Its Own 
Hemp 

While to us the people of Germany our 
military establishment was ever a means 
of defense, and nothing more, to you of 
the oligarchy it was always that, and much 
more. It was an instrument in your hands, 
in part a toy to play with, an ornament, a 
means to pomp and display, an adjunct 
and parade of titled dignity and epauletted 
self-importance, a trade fit for aristocracy, 
an open road to class superiority. 

To you it was more than toy or orna- 
ment, it was an instrument with which you 
could maintain the power of caste in the 
state. 

It was more than this, a weapon you 
88 



THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC 

were fond of using in playing your game 
of diplomacy so mysterious to us humble 
laymen but dear to your more lofty souls, 
your game of shaking the mailed fist, rat- 
tling the sabre, displaying the shining ar- 
mor, frightening your timid neighbor, 
making yourselves the most important, 
most talked-of, most feared men in all Eu- 
rope — your idea of true greatness. 

And in the end, unfortunately, to you 
it became yet something more, a bludgeon 
with which you hoped to beat down the 
walls that stood between you and realiza- 
tion of your festering, cankering, finally 
all-consuming ambition to be masters of 
Europe, and through mastery of Europe 
the headmen of all the world. 

It is probably true that in the beginning 
no such madness was in your veins, that 
for a long time you stood square with us — 
we know our sovereign did — for defense 
alone. But as you went on shaking the 
89 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

mailed fist in the face of Europe, playing 
the game you loved so well, success brought 
its fascination, lured you farther. In time 
the glitter of shining armor and glint from 
the bayonets of which all Europe stood 
afraid dazzled your eyes, affected your 
brain. Even the criticisms of those who 
played the game against you and did not 
love you because you so often beat them, 
that you were war-lords, that you fancied 
yourselves strong enough to conquer the 
world, in the fullness of time augmented 
your vanity, increased your obsession, add- 
ed fuel to the smouldering fires of your am- 
bition, led you to the final and fatuous con- 
clusion that perhaps after all it was true 
your divine mission on earth was conquest 
of mankind in the name of German culture, 
the world did indeed lie at your feet when- 
ever you cared to take bludgeon in hand 
and go forth seeking it. 
We know now there were various occa- 
90 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

sions in recent crises of the diplomatic 
world politics game of frightening your 
neighbor into compliance with your will 
when you thought seriously of precipitat- 
ing the fateful day. One thing or another, 
chiefly the sovereign who long was true to 
his better self and his country, restrained 
and prevented you. But it was only a 
question of time when your fermenting 
fever of ambition and vanity would seize 
what to you looked like a favorable mo- 
ment, override all obstacles, precipitate 
the cataclysm. 

We wish to be just to you. Therefore, 
we say what seems to us to be true, that 
you had so long spent your energies and 
talents in perfecting the great military ma- 
chine under your control, had with such 
persistent skill studied the growth of rival 
military machines and with such care 
mapped out your programme in case of 
conflict between them, in time the inevita- 
91 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

ble psychological effect upon you was a 
conviction that such conflict was sure to 
come, was inevitable, could not be averted. 
And with this conviction you deemed it 
your duty to seize a favorable moment, to 
precipitate what to you was the inevitable 
before your rivals could reach a state of 
better preparedness. It was thus you jus- 
tified yourselves, and with this you gath- 
ered closer and closer about the sovereign, 
pressing harder and harder upon his judg- 
ment and will, awaiting the hour when you 
might have your way. 

Sarajevo was to you the long-awaited 
signal. You were ready, you were eager, 
you lost little time. You made sure that in 
any event our Austrian ally would stand 
by. You thought you made sure that in no 
event would England enter the struggle — 
but for that colossal blunder and self-de- 
ception we cannot conceive that even mad- 
ness such as yours could have driven you 
92 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

on, for with England among our foes, the 
oceans barred, Germany shut in, walls all 
about us on land and sea, the end must 
have been plain even to eyes like yours, 
reddened and distorted with ambition's 
fitful fever. 

During the absence of the sovereign in 
northern waters you skillfully prepared a 
purported state of facts to lay before him 
on his hurried return; Austria was ready, 
Italy would either join you or remain neu- 
tral, England would risk nothing, there 
were only Russia and France to beat, Rus- 
sia which was not only determined to make 
war to crush out internal revolution but 
had mobilized and actually crossed our 
frontier, France that was mad for revanche 
and rushing to the aid of her eastern ally. 

Was the Kaiser Also Deceived? 

All this we know came with painful 
shock and surprise to the sovereign. We 
93 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

know that at first he put against you his 
old-time will for peace. But you convinced 
him the die was cast, that our enemy had 
left him no choice, the fault before man- 
kind and history would be that of Russia, 
it could not be laid at Germany's door. 
You deceived the Kaiser, who for a quarter 
of a century had stood with us of the peo- 
ple against you of the caste, just as a little 
later you deceived us and tried to deceive 
the world. With misgivings, with soul- 
harrowing doubts, and we are informed 
with tears in his eyes, the Emperor yield- 
ed, his resoluteness was broken down in 
the moment of supreme crisis, he failed to 
speak the one word which England had im- 
plored and which would have kept the 
peace — the die was indeed cast, the day 
had come. 

You had won. After all these years of 
preparation, planning, plotting, intriguing, 
you had at last your great chance. 
94 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

You of the cabal had cajoled your mas- 
ter with cunning. 

You of the caste had with a coup made 
an empire your servant. 

You high well-born of the castle had hyp- 
notized us lowly ones beyond the moat 
with the legend that we who had made the 
empire were rallying to its defense, glad 
and proud to be your warriors. 

And now for your great triumph. 

To you it seemed an easy task. Behind 
you was a united, an enthusiastic people, 
in your hands the greatest army in the 
world, before you only the Russians and 
the French who you well knew were but 
ill-prepared. 

By crossing Belgium, which would not 
dare offer resistance, in sixty days Paris 
would be in your hands. 

"With France prostrate through loss of 
her nerve center and paralysis of her na- 
tional organization and communications, 
95 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

she would be forced to early capitulation, 
make the best terms you would grant her, 
give up her coal and ore lands, yield her 
richest industrial section, pay an enor- 
mous indemnity, twice or thrice the whole 
cost of the expedition to Germany. 

With France humbled, put out of the 
fight, reduced to a second-rate power, 
there remained only ponderous, slow-mov- 
ing, inefficient, badly organized Russia. 
She could be easily disposed of, her inter- 
nal revolution would weaken her arm, our 
German intrigue well intrenched at her 
capital and ramifying within her govern- 
ment would help to bring about a speedy 
peace. 

By Christmas, you thought, it would all 
be over. With military campaigns but lit- 
tle more arduous than the usual autumn 
maneuvers Germany would be trium- 
phant; would gain territory; the treasury 
would again be filled to overflowing with 
96 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

French gold; a joyful German people 
would give over for a long time if not for 
always all their vague notions of political 
progress; your importance and power at 
home and abroad would be immeasurably 
augmented; all Europe would tremble 
whenever you opened your mouth or 
stirred your sabre ever so lightly; timid, 
selfish, frightened England would come 
seeking favor with you the new leaders in 
world power, imploring you not to make it 
her turn next. 

The Road to Remorse and Retribution 

Verging upon madness as all this seems 
to us now and must seem to you in these 
our soberer hours, it is only fair to say we 
believe you really thought it all possible, 
thought the easy profits of the venture 
would loom so large on the credit side of 
the ledger that we the people would sup- 
press all thought of motive and morality in 
97 



THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC 

our national pride and glory in national 
success. 

Of course you know, and all the world 
should know, that if you had frankly told 
us what your real purpose was, told us in 
time so that opportunity remained for us 
to speak our minds, all Germany would 
have done whatever it could, be that much 
or little, and we see now it must necessar- 
ily have been all too little, to stay your 
hands. We see now that when in that fate- 
ful moment you captured preeminent au- 
thority you captured us, our system made 
us children, our system changed us in a 
twinkling from men and women of mod- 
ern times to feudal tribesmen under the 
absolute command of warlike chiefs. 

You were supreme masters not only of 
our lives and property but of our morality. 
You made us your co-partners before the 
world in a venture of international high- 
waymanry, you made us a tribe of 
98 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

modern, prepared, organized, efficient, 
formidable barbarians sallying forth to 
terrorize, subjugate, rob neighboring 
tribes. 

And what a price we who are Germany, 
we artisans and toilers and shopkeepers 
from beyond the moat, have paid for our 
obsession of faith in you of the princely 
castle, for your obsession of faith in physi- 
cal force as the dominant factor in mod- 
ern civilization, for your mad vanity and 
insane ambition, for your lack of even the 
rudiments of understanding of what mod- 
ern civilization is really made of, of the 
underlying moral forces of developed man 
which must rally with ever-increasing 
might and resoluteness to defeat and crush 
you. 

We who made Germany what it is, we 

of the farm, the shop, the machine, the 

factory, the school, the mart, the ships, 

we who had been out in the great world 

99 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

beyond and learned to know something of 
that world's people and the deep currents, 
the foundation convictions, the self-re- 
liance, the manhood, the strength of will 
and resistance among them when those 
basic convictions are placed in jeopardy, 
we who had met and measured other men 
in the field of open commercial and indus- 
trial competition, we Germans who work 
and think and achieve in and of the age in 
which we live — 

We could have told you of the caste and 
the castle, you of the barracks and the 
bureaus, you who had mastered your mar- 
tial tactics but knew not human nature, 
you who were skilled in the art of destroy- 
ing life but did not know what life was, 
you titled diplomatists adroit in the super- 
ficial game of international intrigue who 
never comprehended the vast moral forces 
and indestructible convictions of the mil- 
lions of despised and lowly democracies 
100 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

massed down near the soil of the lands 
they played the game with — 

We could have told you feudal knights 
in armor that even with modern armies 
and modern weapons and the valor and 
efficiency of a highly developed modern 
people in your hands how impossible was 
the venture you set out upon with such 
light hearts, we could have told you down 
what road to ruin and retribution you 
were plunging, pushing us before you. 

But you did not ask us — you told us what 
was not true. 

You staked us and our all in a gambler's 
cast without letting us know what we were 
playing for. 

Triumph of your plot might have 
brought to you something which to you 
might have seemed worth having, but 
could not have brought to us anything 
which would to us have seemed worth hav- 
ing after our blood had cooled. 
101 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

For well do we know that the road along 
which civilization marches is under the 
rule of moral law, that enduring thrift 
in the game of highwaymanry, individual 
or international, is impossible upon it. 
A little loot the most desperate may tem- 
porarily gain, but at what a price, how 
hard to keep. 

You may be content to be outlaw, with a 
prize set on your heads, but we the peo- 
ple of Germany are not. 

Our system, our loyalty to that system, 
to our country, aided your deceit in mak- 
ing us your partners before the eyes of 
an outraged world. You cannot say we 
did not play fair with you. While the 
mad adventure was on we upheld your 
hands. A million graves of Germans are 
the monuments to our tribal fidelity. 

But you did not play fair with us. You 
made us fight for something which did 
not exist. You made us fight for things 
102 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

we abhor. You made us fight for things 
which were not only ignoble, unworthy, 
but impossible. You made us victims of 
a cause which would have been a failure 
even if it had won. 

The co-partnership that existed between 
you and us must be eternally dissolved. 



103 



CHAPTER VIII 

GERMAN MANHOOD SPEAKS TO THE WORLD 

(Address Adopted by the Congress of Del- 
egates from Twenty-six German States 
Held at Berlin) 

To all the peoples of the civilized world, 
and to the pages of history, we the men 
and women of Germany in this bitter hour 
of our national defeat — nay, in this glor- 
ious hour of our regeneration and refor- 
mation through suffering and sacrifice — 
wish to speak: 

We seek to escape none of our just re- 
sponsibility for the disaster that has been 
inflicted upon the world. We are not 
blameless. We, too, have been mad. Too 
long we failed to open our eyes to what was 
being done in our name and with our 
strength, too long we permitted ourselves 
104 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

to be victimized by our system, too long 
were we blindly passionate, irrational, bit- 
ter, unreasoning. 

Too long did we succumb to that pecul- 
iar epidemic of mental obsession which is 
one of the ills all excessive nationalism is 
heir to and which in the past has engulfed 
other masses of men and women — we are 
not alone in this weakness — that spiritual 
stampede which starts up in a people with 
some irritating cause and for a time is all- 
embracing, all-oompelling, mad-rushing, 
sweeping away all rational standards, de- 
stroying all logical landmarks, leaving in- 
tact no places of mental refuge or read- 
justment — nothing for anyone to do but 
rush on, shouting, gesticulating, cursing, 
striking, unable to pause if you wish be- 
cause all about you are doing the same, 
pushing, pulling, inflaming, carrying you 
along in the torrent, hating all that is not 
for and of you, loving only your own and 
105 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

yourselves, seeing only with red eyes, hear- 
ing with but one ear, thinking only with 
a brain surcharged with heated blood, 
the will fierce with passion, all muscles, 
nerves, sinews quivering with fever, the 
soul itself drunk with the joyful, justifying 
faith that all this is patriotism, love of 
country, duty, devotion to the land of our 
fathers. 

But now the spiritual stampede is at 
an end. We the people of Germany are 
ourselves again. Gone are all the fever 
and passion. We think calmly and coolly, 
we see with wide open eyes. 

Believe us, fair-minded, just, generous 
peoples of the world, serene and judicial 
in your happiness and prosperity, un- 
scathed by the desperation of war and un- 
embittered by the falsity of your leaders 
— we pray that your national or tribal 
spirit may never suffer like access of the 
mass-madness from which we are just now 
106 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

< 
recovered — it is with humility and contri- 
tion we ask pardon for our errors, and beg 
you to remember the great stress that was 
put upon us, the hard pressure of habit, 
tradition and long inculcated feeling that 
bore down upon us in a crisis, and be mer- 
ciful in your judgment of us. 

We regret that we did not betimes see 
the truth and force our leaders to aban- 
don their unrighteous adventure. 

We regret that having begun a war with 
criminal motive they prosecuted it with 
criminal methods. 

We regret that poor Belgium was in- 
vaded, violated, subjugated, stricken down. 
The crossing of Belgian territory by our 
troops we had justified on the ground of 
military necessity as long as we believed 
our war was solely one of self-defence, as 
long as we believed we were fighting for 
our right to exist. We justify it no more, 
and pledge ourselves that Belgium shall 
107 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

have all the atonement in our power to 
give. 

We regret all wanton and unnecessary- 
destruction of Belgian and French cathe- 
drals and other works of art and monu- 
ments of history by our troops, or the part 
of our troops which were imbued more 
with the militaristic spirit of our leaders 
than with true German veneration for such 
works of man, and pledge that our gov- 
ernment will immediately join other gov- 
ernments in creating a commission to ad- 
judge the reparation due from us for these 
wrongs. 

The Crime of the Lusitania 

Our regret is great and deep for the 
crime of the sinking of the peaceful ship 
Lusitania, and for the sinking of other non- 
combatant ships with loss of human lives. 
We bitterly repent that in our feverish, 
passionate hours we justified that crime 
108 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

and even fell to the depth of glorifying in 
it as a triumph for our navy. It is diffi- 
cult for us now in our present calmness 
to realize that we ever gloated over the 
deliberate murder of a thousand or more 
innocent men, women and children, and 
now we see only too clearly why you of 
civilization not only abhorred that crime 
but detested us for giving countenance and 
approval to it. Our madness must then 
have been at its climax. 

Then we tried to convince ourselves that 
our military leaders had a right to sink the 
Lusitania because she carried ammunition 
destined for use in killing our soldiers. 
Now that our vision has cleared we see the 
fallacy of that argument. No civilized mil- 
itary power destroys a city or town and 
all its non-combatant inhabitants, without 
warning or opportunity to seek safety, sim- 
ply to destroy munitions of war stored in 
those places. The Lusitania was a floating 
109 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

city. By the laws of war we had the right 
to get the munitions out of her cargo and 
destroy them if we could do so without kill- 
ing the people who were her passengers, 
but not to kill the people in order to get the 
munitions. 

If the excuses which we formerly ap- 
plied to this crime and the principle in- 
volved therein are held to be sound guide 
in military operations, an invading army 
is at liberty, without warning, to destroy 
any city or town that lies in its path, beat 
down all the buildings, bury in the ruins 
all the inhabitants, in order to make sure 
military material in such towns shall not 
afterward be used by the enemy's troops. 
An invading army could go further: It 
could say that the people along its line of 
march were of the enemy, and whilst at 
the moment non-combatant would at the 
first opportunity give aid, succour, ma- 
terial, to the combative forces of their na- 
110 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

tive land, and therefore stand them up by 
the side of the line of march and shoot 
them down, men who might become enemy 
soldiers, women who might bear enemy 
soldiers, children who might live to be- 
come enemies. 

This is savagery pure and simple, a dis- 
grace to civilized war. 

The sinking of the Lusitania was sav- 
agery, pure and simple, a disgrace to the 
nation responsible for it. 

For that crime we feel bitter remorse. 
Direct and ample reparation from us to its 
victims and the families of its victims is 
impossible. But atonement of a higher and 
nobler sort we shall render before all the 
world. 

More Crimes— More Falsehoods 

We regret the Zeppelin raids on English 
towns and villages and the bombardment 
by our cruisers of English ports. "We were 
111 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

told by our military authorities that these 
attacks were justified by the definite mili- 
tary damage inflicted upon our enemy. 
Now we know this was not true, that the 
definite military loss was trifling, and we 
see that it must have been so because 
bombs dropped in the night from ships 
high in the air above the vaguely discern- 
ible land below, and shells fired from cruis- 
ers well out to sea, were of necessity 
dropped or fired indiscriminately, and such 
indiscriminate random attack must inevi- 
tably inflict far more hurt upon peaceful 
civilians than upon military works, if any 
were there. 

Now that we have better information we 
repent that through such blind assaults 
innocent men, women and children were 
murdered. We German people called to 
war have made war as warriors upon war- 
riors, and we have waged it valiantly, we 
believe, against a valiant foe. But we have 
112 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

not wished to make war upon women and 
children, for that is savagery, and we are 
not savages. Wherever our enemy has 
made like savage and indiscriminate as- 
saults — he is equally guilty and should fall 
under the same condemnation. 

We regret the use of poisonous gases and 
liquid fire by our armies because we do 
not regard such instruments a proper part 
of civilized warfare, regardless of the truth 
or falsity of what our leaders told us, that 
the enemy was the first to employ them. 
If the enemy first used them he also is 
guilty ; but even in such case it would bet- 
ter satisfy the conscience and the chivalry 
of our people if our leaders had protested 
against such crimes instead of imitating 
them. 

We regret that German ingenuity, in- 
ventiveness, skill in the arts and chemistry 
so often signally shown in the good works 
of mankind in saving life, curing disease, 
113 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

preventing contagion, minimizing pain, in 
adaptation of mechanics and the utilization 
of physical forces and materials for man's 
benefit and comfort, on land and sea and 
in man's long dream of conquest of the 
air, should have been prostituted in the 
recent mad struggle to the development 
of new and hideous ways of slaughtering 
our fellow man. 

We regret that our military authorities 
fell so low in the scale of morality and 
decency as to give a traitor emissary from 
an enemy country access to our prison 
camps for the known purpose of bribing 
his fellow countrymen under our protection 
to turn traitor like himself; and that our 
authorities abetted this vile effort by in- 
flicting upon prisoners who refused to turn 
traitor the severe punishment of reduced 
rations. If our brave soldiers, by the ac- 
cident of war made prisoners in enemy 
country, were tempted to turn traitor to 
114 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Germany and subjected to hunger as pun- 
ishment for loyalty to Germany, even our 
military authorities would denounce the 
enemy as guilty of shameful and dishon- 
orable conduct. 



115 



CHAPTER IX 

A SPECIAL WORD TO AMERICA 

We now regret that during the period 
of our blindness we were embittered to- 
ward America for selling munitions of 
war to our enemies. We know now, and ac- 
knowledge, as we should have seen and 
acknowledged then, that such sale of mu- 
nitions of war to any or all belligerents has 
been the established and legal practise of 
nations, including ourselves, for many gen- 
erations. We recognize now that such sale 
was free and fair under international law, 
and that to suspend the law and abandon 
sale in favor to a particular belligerent 
would have meant nothing but unneutral- 
ity. 

We freely confess that if Germany had 
116 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

required munitions from America, and had 
enjoyed control of the seas and therefore 
ability not only to buy munitions but to 
carry them home, and if America had re- 
fused to sell to us because our rivals with- 
out control of the sea could not also buy 
and carry home, that we should have de- 
nounced as an act of unneutrality deliber- 
ately unfriendly to us. 

It would have been deliberately unneu- 
tral and unfriendly to us because a con- 
scious effort of the part of the United 
States to deprive us of the advantage over 
our enemies which was rightly ours under 
international law through our power on 
the sea. 

We see now what we should have seen 
long ago, and would have seen had not 
our eyes been blinded by passion, that the 
right to buy and the right to sell are both 
free, well established, indisputable, and 
that in the exercise of these rights all na- 
117 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

tions are equal before the law. If all the 
belligerents in a war are able to buy and 
carry home, the equality continues. But if 
some are able to carry home and others 
are not, that is a circumstance over which 
the seller has no control and no responsi- 
bility. The inequality of power to carry 
home is- an incident of the relative mili- 
tary or sea power of the belligerents, and 
if the seller changes the law and practise 
under the law at his own pecuniary loss 
and refuses to sell to those who have the 
power to carry away he violates law and 
neutrality by trying to help the weak on 
the sea and deprive the strong on the sea 
of the legitimate fruit of his naval enter- 
prise. He thereby makes himself the ally 
of one and the enemy of the other. 

All this now seems to us so obvious, 

simple, elementary, we are surprised that 

even in our most irrational hours we should 

have been so childish and unjust as to ac- 

118 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

cuse America of wrong-doing in this con- 
nection. 

For now we see that instead of blaming 
America for her attitude toward us we 
should be grateful to her for her patience 
and forbearance with us. 

We regret that some of our blood broth- 
ers, citizens of the United States, infected 
with the same mental obsession that had 
engulfed us at home, turned against their 
own country in their mad passion for our 
German cause, insulted the marvelously 
patient head of their government, used 
their freedom of action and movement in 
their free country to foment disturbances, 
strikes, arsons, explosions, murders, which 
in their passing madness they thought 
might help us in our struggle. 

We thank the American people for their 
sublime patience amidst all this violation 
of their laws and offense against their dig- 
nity and neutrality. 

119 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

America's Unprecedented Patience 

"When our authorities deliberately sank 
the Lusitania and murdered more than a 
hundred innocent American citizens, the 
American government at any other period 
of its career, if we have read aright our 
history, or any other self-respecting gov- 
ernment in the world in like case, would 
have demanded instant apology and repa- 
ration under penalty of war. 

"When our government met the moderate 
and not unfriendly demand the American 
government did make with evasion and in- 
sincerity, when we the people of Germany 
in our distrait state of mind, we say it in 
shame, supported our authorities, justified 
their crime, and said as the American citi- 
zens had been warned they took their lives 
in their own hands and brought on their 
own destruction — when all this was fol- 
lowed by more crimes and like fatuous 
120 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

justification, by more evasion and insin- 
cerity and brutal indifference to the decen- 
cies of life, we now confess in all humility 
that the natural effect immediately fol- 
lowed among us : 

"We despised the Americans for their 
weakness, we had only contempt for their 
patience, and many of us urged our leaders 
to go on butchering Americans or any other 
neutrals who chanced to place themselves 
in the path of our policy of striking terror 
to the hearts of our enemies. 

But now that our minds have found 
equilibrium and our moral perceptions 
again work normally, we understand full 
well how all these crimes and all their at- 
tendant offenses must have horrified, sad- 
dened, angered all on-looking mankind and 
filled the hearts of good men everywhere 
in the world with inexpressible detestation 
of the criminals and of all who defended 
the crimes. 

121 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

We see now that we Germans should fall 
upon our knees and humbly give thanks 
that all neutral mankind did not vent their 
natural and justifiable abhorrence by ris- 
ing together and declaring us outlaw of 
civilization, a wild beast afflicted with rab- 
ies running amuck whose extermination or 
incarceration was the first and foremost 
task of the world. 

Even now we marvel that if the great 
Christian peoples stopped short of employ- 
ing physical force in our suppression and 
chastisement, they did not at least compel 
their governments to break off all neigh- 
borly relations with our criminal leaders 
and thus put the stigma of civilization's 
condemnation and history's judgment upon 
our offenses against the laws of God and 
humanity. 



122 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

The Great Crime Against Civilization 

We marvel the more that this just pun- 
ishment was not inflicted upon us because 
now, with sanity restored, we realize only 
too well the blackness of the crime which 
had been committed in our name against 
civilization of which the crime of the Lusi- 
tania, great as it was, was only sympto- 
matic. 

This greatest of crimes was the plot of 
our ruling caste to plunge the world back- 
ward two centuries and revert to physical 
force as the all-controlling factor in the 
relations of men. 

Not only to set up physical force as dom- 
inant as in the savage age of man's career, 
but with it the doctrine that it is right, de- 
fensible, necessary, moral, not only to make 
physical strength superior to moral 
strength, but to make it morality itself. 

And stopping not there, not only set- 
123 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

ting up physical force as supreme in power 
and superior in right, but along with this 
the theory that physical force is best or- 
ganized, directed and applied by absolu- 
tism in government, resting not upon the 
popular will or public opinion or moral 
force as evolved and perfected by so- 
ciety, but upon hereditary or accidental 
chieftainship upheld by the legions of 
Might. 

The neutral world must indeed have 
looked upon our great war as a great crime, 
greater than a mere adventure in interna- 
tional brigandage — an effort to tear down 
all that civilization stands for and holds 
most precious, an effort to plunge man- 
kind back into the despotism and darkness 
of the middle ages. 

Hence our present amazement that man- 
kind did not seize upon the poignant and 
spectacular crime of the Lusitania, symp- 
tomatic of the whole spirit of the backward 
124 



THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC 

movement, and do one or both of these 
things : 

Combine its armies and navies for our 
suppression as enemies of the race ; 

Banish us, at least so long as our mad- 
ness should rage, from the family of na- 
tions, denounce us as outlaw, renegade, out- 
oast. 

The World's Lack of a Great Moral 
Leader 

We further confess our belief that if 
mankind had thus risen and declared its 
ban upon us our sanity would the sooner 
have returned, the senseless war might the 
sooner have come to its end. 

If, after the crime of the Lusitania and 
the failure of our government to meet in 
good faith and fair response his just de- 
mands the official head of the greatest of 
all the neutral peoples had not only sev- 
ered all friendly relations with us, but in 
125 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

words that could have burnt their way to 
our very souls had held the lamp of truth 
up to our deeds of darkness, at the same 
time inviting all the other peoples of 
earth to join with America in making us 
outlaw, we believe deep in our hearts that 
we the German people, shamed and 
shocked, after the first hours of bitter re- 
sentment had passed would have been 
roused into the processes of self-search 
which must quickly have led to emancipa- 
tion of our reason and assertion of our 
determination to be no longer criminal. 

For, despite all that we have done or per- 
mitted to be done in our name, despite all 
the crimes laid at our door, we the people 
of Germany are not savages, we are not 
cave-men, we do not wish to kill our neigh- 
bor or rob him of his land and goods, we 
are not bandits, we do not believe in the 
domination of Might over Right or of 
physical over moral force, we abhor the 
126 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

butchery of innocent men, women and chil- 
dren, we are warm-hearted, generous, 
chivalrous, we are as just and peace-loving 
as the average of the world's peoples, we 
wish to be good citizens of the world and 
crave the esteem and confidence of our 
fellow men — but we had been tricked, and 
we were mad ! 

To rouse us from our madness we needed 
the shock of a rebuke that would have shiv- 
ered us to the soul. We needed an appeal 
to our manhood and our moral sense 
through pride and shame. Disciplinary 
physical force was not required; we were 
already facing so much of that we feared 
it not, and if more had been added might 
have put our backs to the wall and fought 
all the earth as long as breath was in us. 

But if the great and almost divinely pa- 
tient President of the United States, with 
the greatest of all the world's peoples be- 
hind him, had resolutely seized the finest 
127 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

opportunity in all history to confront a 
world offender with the silent, resistless, 
overwhelming moral force of an aroused 
civilization — moral force, the very essence 
of civilization, more potent in the final test 
than all the armies and navies of embattled 
Europe, more effective and decisive than 
a score of defeats in the field ; 

If after our Kaiser had failed when fate 
brought him to the supreme moment, when 
he was implored to say the word the world 
was hoping for, the word peace, and in- 
stead brought on the crime against civili- 
zation ; if the American President had not 
likewise failed when opportunity knocked 
once at his door with bid to place his name 
high in the list of immortals by summon- 
ing forth the moral might of the world 
against a world crime; 

If we had been thus haled to the judg- 
ment seat and there confronted with the 
open, glassy, accusing eyes of the innocent 
128 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

victims of the Lusitania floating out on the 
ocean current, grim example of all that we 
had been made to stand and fight for and 
try to force upon an unwilling world, Ger- 
man shame would quickly have shaken the 
German conscience, roused German man- 
hood, cleared German eyes. It might not 
have been necessary to wait till hundreds 
of thousands of graves of brave French, 
English and German soldiers dotted the 
landscape along the Meuse and the Yser. 
Though our eyes are now filled with tears 
of remorse, and of gratitude, we clearly see 
that neutral mankind withheld from us his 
heavy, punitive hand, spared us the ban of 
outlawry, not because we were undeserv- 
ing of both, but because in great under- 
standing and great generosity and more 
than human patience he made distinction 
between us the German people and the Ger- 
man military-autocracy, knew that we were 
victims not authors of the crime. 
129 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Gratitude for this distinction and that 
forbearance does not take away from us 
our sense of responsibility. All that was 
done was done in our name, with our 
strength, with the system which we had 
permitted to survive and reign among us. 

This responsibility we, the German peo- 
ple, aroused, clear-eyed, strong, self-re- 
liant, free moral agents, accept and meet. 

We have found the cause of our ills, and 
now, as men grown, modern, master of our 
land and its destinies, we resolutely seek 
the remedy. 

It was during the period of the formal 
armistice that the great awakening came 
in Germany. The movement embraced 
nearly all of the people. Upon an ap- 
pointed day German men and women gath- 
ered in mass meetings in all the cities, 
towns and villages of the empire. They as- 
sembled by the millions, calm, determined, 
130 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

unafraid. They met no opposition or in- 
terference. The meetings adopted resolu- 
tions declaring the oligarchical govern- 
ment had lost the confidence of the country 
and must be supplanted by a government 
truly representative of the nation's char- 
acter and will, at home and abroad. 

By order of the General Committee elec- 
tions were soon held, and all the states sent 
delegates to the National Congress called 
to meet at Berlin. 

After a few days of deliberation the Na- 
tional Congress adopted the report of a 
committee appointed to prepare an ad- 
dress to the peoples of the world, a 
transcript of which is given in the fore- 
going chapters. 

A little later the Congress proclaimed a 
new government and organized a provis- 
ional ministry which at once took posses- 
sion of all the offices and bureaus, and com- 
mand of the army and navy, and then pro- 
131 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

ceeded to negotiate treaties of peace with 
all enemy nations. Meanwhile the armis- 
tice, arranged in the first place because the 
German awakening was known to be on the 
way, had been automatically extended by 
common consent, and for more than six 
months peace had everywhere prevailed. 



132 



CHAPTER X 

FOUNDING THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

(Declaration of Self -Government Unani- 
mously Adopted by the Delegates from 
26 German States in National Congress 
Assembled at Berlin) 

Whenever in the course of human events 
it becomes necessary for a people to dis- 
solve the government which they have hith- 
erto maintained and to set up another bet- 
ter suited to their aims, principles and as- 
pirations, a decent respect to the opinions 
of mankind requires that they should de- 
clare the causes which impel them to the 
change and give pledge of their future con- 
duct as a member of the family of nations. 
We hold these truths to be self-evident: 
That all men are created with equal right 
133 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happi- 
ness; 

That to secure these rights governments 
are instituted among men, deriving all 
their powers from the people governed and 
possessing no power derived from ances- 
try, inheritance, the heavens or any other 
source whatsoever than the will of the peo- 
ple who created them; 

That as governments are instituted and 
exist solely to render Service to the people 
all authority vested in the government 
must be used exclusively for service, for 
securing the right to life, protecting 
liberty, promoting happiness, and not for 
any other purpose whatsoever ; 

That all civilization is based upon Moral 
Force as distinguished from physical 
force ; that the essence of civilization, that 
which marks its upward progress from 
primitive society bordering on savagery, 
is the superiority of moral over physical 
134 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

force, the utilization of all natural ele- 
ments, forces and materials in promoting 
the comfort, health, strength and happiness 
of mankind, while all organization of so- 
ciety, individual and social rules of con- 
duct, relation of neighbor with neighbor, 
community with community, state with 
state, nation with nation, all laws of or- 
ganized society and all governments and 
institutions for enforcing those laws are 
founded upon Moral Force alone ; 

That no government has the right to or- 
ganize physical force in the form of bodies 
of armed men or armed vessels and with it 
exert tyranny over the people, or the peo- 
ple 's rights to self-government and to free- 
dom of opinion, discussion and agitation 
without which self-government is impos- 
sible, or for the purpose of exercising re- 
straint upon neighboring nations through 
use or the fear of the use of physical vio- 
lence upon them ; 

135 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

That German civilization has been long 
founded upon these rights of the people 
and these moral forces which alone control 
domestic affairs and must henceforth con- 
trol all foreign relations or dealings of the 
government with neighbors, physical forces 
being mere servitors, hand-maidens, or in- 
struments of moral purposes and polities. 

We repudiate and abandon the tradition 
that modern, civilized government can be 
successfully and permanently based upon 
high authority coming into being through 
some other agency or process than the will 
of the people, possessing attributes of ab- 
solutism or divinity, and because of this 
fictitious superiority being not of the peo- 
ple but a thing apart and above, not open 
to question of its infallibility or criticism 
of its acts, basing its practical power upon 
this fiction and wielding it with the weap- 
ons of physical force, thus setting physical 
force, directed by a power coming from 
136 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

without, above and dominant over moral 
force coming from within the culture of the 
people. 

We repudiate and abandon the tradi- 
tion that neighboring nations are simply 
other highly developed tribes controlled 
by other chiefs, alike dominated by absolu- 
tism and physical force, and because for- 
eigners, not of us, probably or necessarily 
enemies, peace or war exists between us 
as our chiefs may direct through the chang- 
ing inter-play of their selfishness, whims, 
jealousies, quarrels or ambitions. 

We recognize the fact that whilst such 
traditions remain and have power in the 
regulation of the conduct of nations, how- 
ever polished or softened or disguised com- 
pared with their savage ante-types, the 
lives, liberty and happiness of a people are 
not secure within the guardianship of their 
own moral force, and civilization is far 
from reaching its ultimate ideal, the com- 
137 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

plete domination of morality, justice in 
all human affairs. 

Toward this ideal we German people 
have striven, as other peoples have striven. 
We believe our intrinsic progress as a peo- 
ple has been as great as that of other peo- 
ples. Responsibility for survival to this 
day of middle-ages tradition, inconsistent 
with and harmful to modern social organi- 
zation, rests not upon us alone. We de- 
clare it the duty of every modern people 
to examine critically their own organiza- 
tion, take immediate steps to cast out all 
baneful survival, and to help not hinder 
their neighbors in like reformation. This 
we Germans are now doing. 

The System That Made the Crime Pos- 
sible 

We recognize the fact that civilization 
has made its greatest moral progress, its 
nearest approach to the ideal, in central 
138 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

and western Europe and in the American 
continent; that a small group of nations 
of the first rank in population, resources, 
wealth, power, are virtually the leaders and 
moulders of modern civilization ; according 
as they go slowly or rapidly forward civi- 
lization in general moves slowly or rapidly ; 
if they take a backward step all civilization 
reverts or its progress is retarded. Upon 
these four or five great and advanced peo- 
ples rests responsibility for making civili- 
zation what it is. 

All of these world leaders have been 
lately at war, the American republic alone 
excepted. Those who should have led the 
march forward have reverted toward bar- 
barism and carried much of the world back- 
ward with them. They have involved man- 
kind in an agony of destruction and suffer- 
ing, much of the progress of a century ap- 
pears to have been lost at a single stroke. 

It is the judgment of neutral mankind, 
139 



THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC 

and will doubtless be the judgment of His- 
tory, that this war broke upon the world in 
the complete absence of high or critical 
issue between the belligerents, no dispute 
between them of more than passing, small 
import to any, no quarrel involving vital 
principle or rights or even property or ad- 
vantage of real importance even when 
viewed with the narrowest selfishness, 
nothing at stake worth the sacrifice of 
even one human life. 

It is the judgment of neutral mankind, 
and will doubtless be the judgment of His- 
tory, that the war came because one or 
other or some group of the four or five 
nations of the first rank, virtual guardians 
of civilization, suffered an excess of tribal- 
ism and through blunder or crime of chief- 
tainship reverted to the ways of savagery 
and made war for purpose of robbery and 
subjugation. 

It is the further judgment of neutral 
140 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

mankind, and will doubtless be the judg- 
ment of History, that once this reversion 
had taken place, the war once started, an 
issue of supreme importance was created. 
Begun over nothing, it now was a struggle 
for everything worth while — whether civi- 
lization was to go back toward barbarism 
with tribal chieftainship and physical force 
dominant in the organization of society and 
government, or whether it was to go for- 
ward toward the ultimate ideal of man- 
kind ruling itself through its developed 
moral forces scientifically organized. 

It was inevitable from the first, written 
in the book of fate, that the outcome, how- 
ever reached, however long and bloody was 
the road to it, must be the triumph of 
moral force. Any other verdict would have 
meant the collapse of civilization. 

Fixing of responsibility for this rever- 
sion is of the utmost importance to all 
mankind, because it is only in this way we 
141 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

can know where the weakness of the former 
organization was, where the remedy must 
be applied and how, that the verdict may 
be made complete and permanent, that 
the world may not some day have to fight 
the ruinous fight all over again. Hence we 
German people are directly and earnestly 
concerned with the great question of re- 
sponsibility, hence our present action. 

Responsibility a Vital Question 

We are well aware it is the judgment of 
neutral mankind, and will doubtless be the 
judgment of History, that the German na- 
tion is chiefly responsible, that the rever- 
sion toward barbarism which engulfed in 
the struggle all but one of the four or five 
great nations, and many other nations, 
came from us. This judgment we the peo- 
ple of Germany, now that our eyes are self- 
opened, are forced to accept. We deem it 
the highest human quality to seek truth, 
142 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

find it, face it even when it hurts self, man- 
fully admit fault, seek remedy, reparation, 
regeneration. It being human to err, this 
candid self-correction is of the essence of 
the process of moral progress, there can 
be no real moral progress, individual or 
national, without it. 

Responsibility for the war we the Ger- 
man people accept, with important quali- 
fications : 

First, that we Germans are not more to 
be blamed than the other great nations 
of central and western Europe for per- 
mitting survival of the spirit of tribalism, 
armed nationalism upon land and sea, 
physical force frowning and threatening 
behind all moral force in the relations of 
the nations ; 

Second, that a European power not of 
the advanced and most highly developed 
peoples but vast in area, population, po- 
tential strength, maintained much more 
143 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

than any of the group of central and west- 
ern powers the tradition of tribe and abso- 
lutism, with great military prowess and 
autocratic authority to use it in attack 
upon others without the need of giving 
valid reason therefor to its myriad of vas- 
sal subjects; 

Third, that one of the highly developed 
nations, which had made signal progress 
in all other ways toward civilization's 
ideal, effected open alliance with this giant 
of absolutism with the avowed purpose of 
finding checkmate to Germany, one of the 
partners in this alliance being our neigh- 
bor on the west and the other our neigh- 
bor on the east, extensive frontiers be- 
tween our lands ; 

Fourth, that soon afterward a third 
member of the advanced group, a power 
which more than any other had maintained 
armed nationalism upon the high seas with 
the avowed and achieved purpose of mas- 
144 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

tery there, in spirit and effect if not in 
formal compact leagued itself with this al- 
liance of our eastern and western neigh- 
bors, also with the undisguised aim of find- 
ing checkmate to Germany. 

These facts show how those great na- 
tions who stood jointly responsible with 
Germany for maintenance of the forward 
march of civilization not only preserved 
the tribal tradition of physical force, with 
hostility to or fear of us as prime motive, 
but in hostility to or fear of us made open 
alliance with a power more mediaeval than 
any of us. 

These facts show how divided was re- 
sponsibility for survival of the system, how 
natural and inevitable was the conviction 
which spread in Germany that we were 
surrounded by a coalition of armed and 
powerful nations which some day soon or 
late we must contend against for our right 
to exist. 

145 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

But having stated these qualifications 
of our responsibility, in our striving for 
the whole truth we reach and declare this 
as our belief : 

Morally advanced, democratic England 
and France leagued themselves with ill-de- 
veloped, autocratic Russia because they 
feared Germany; 

Their league inevitably convinced Ger- 
man authority, and to a large extent the 
German people, that we were surrounded 
by enemies; 

But we see now what we could not see 
before, that the purpose of England and 
France was not to attack Germany, but 
to prevent Germany attacking them by 
massing so much strength as to make Ger- 
man attack suicidal and therefore impos- 
sible ; 

The aim of England and France was not 
to break the peace of the world but to keep 
it. They would not themselves start war, 
146 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Russia as their ally would not dare attack 
alone, they could restrain her, Germany 
would never rush against odds so heavy — 
peace was therefore assured in the check- 
mate of combined strength on land and 
sea. 

Such was the situation; such was the 
bulwark built to restrain the flood; it in- 
deed seemed impregnable ; confidence in the 
permanence of the armed peace was jus- 
tifiable. 

Then the war came — came to the con- 
sternation of the coalition, to the amaze- 
ment of the onlooking world, to the sur- 
prise of the German people. 

Where was the fatal weak spot in the ap- 
parently unbreakable barrier? "What gave 
way and let the torrent of barbarism sweep 
down upon all the lands I Who or what is 
responsible for the catastrophe 1 ? 



147 



THE GEKMAN EEPUBLIC 

The Fatefully Weak Spot in the Barrier 

We have sought that weak spot and 
found it : 

The true genius of our people lay in the 
realm of peace, not war. Our civilization 
had taken on high development, we had be- 
come a workshop for much of the world, 
our industrial empire lay out over the seas, 
the prosperity of all other peoples meant 
our prosperity, our highest interests de- 
manded only good relations with all man- 
kind. 

We had a government highly efficient at 
home, expressive there of the national 
character and will, setting a model which 
much of the world was glad to follow in 
municipal, community, common-social Ser- 
vice. With that government we were con- 
tent. Its minor imperfections we should 
remedy in our own time and way. Des- 
pite the tribal traditions it cherished, its 
148 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

mediaeval outward form, its proud pre- 
tensions, some of the limitations it im- 
posed upon individualism and free citizen- 
ship, we had no fear that it contained an 
element of national danger. 

But we see now what for years our eyes 
could not see, that side by side with this 
shining exemplar of self-government for 
Service we were unsuspiciously maintain- 
ing the wholly inconsistent tribal tradition 
that the people exist only to serve the gov- 
ernment whenever the government elects to 
summon them; and this government not a 
creation of the people, evolved from their 
moral development, expressive of their 
character, responsible to their will, but a 
thing apart, superior, without the sense of 
direct responsibility, with a strong will of 
its own different in tendency and morality 
from the will of the people, adjusted to a 
different standard, moving in a different 
environment, affected by different tradi- 
149 



THF GERMAN REPUBLIC 

tions, at any moment likely to have differ- 
ent motive. 

We now see that our government was 
badly, inefficiently, inconsistently organ- 
ized. It was strong at home because 
evolved from the people, through the proc- 
esses of selection and perfection. 

It was weak and dangerous abroad be- 
cause all our foreign relations were left in 
the supreme control of this higher and dif- 
ferent authority. Of the actual state and 
significance of our political relations with 
our neighbors we the people knew little, 
only what the all-powerful higher agency 
permitted us to know, passed out to us with 
its own coloring or interpretation. Intel- 
ligent, forceful, effective public opinion in 
foreign affairs was an impossibility. We 
were psychologically and morally as well as 
physically and materially in the hollow of 
the hands of the mediaeval part of our 
national organization. 
150 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

We see now that whilst we the people 
were laboriously building a great nation, 
among the foremost of the world's family, 
we negligently left in the hands of a caste, 
a small minority amongst us, the power to 
ruin all we had built. 

Looking inward we were a highly devel- 
oped, self-governing nation; looking out- 
ward we were a chief -ruled tribe of humble, 
ignorant vassals. 

The world-crisis, the pressure of events, 
came from without, caught Germany where 
German organization was weakest, most 
vulnerable, most dangerous, least expres- 
sive of the character and will of the na- 
tion, where the people, uninformed, child- 
like, were easily led to a spiritual stam- 
pede, easily made victims, dupes. 

Here was the weak point in the barrier 
against barbarism, here came the break 
that let in the deluge. 

We now see clearly why Europe was an 
151 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

armed camp, why the coalition of advanced 
powers with a backward power was made, 
why the league was formed against Ger- 
many which led to the ghastly misunder- 
standing and blindness of our people and 
through that to the greatest earthly trag- 
edy. 

All Peoples for Peace— Yet War Came 

In Europe there were three highly devel- 
oped nations jointly responsible for the 
peace and progress of the world. 

In all three the peoples wanted peace, 
had no wish for conflict with their neigh- 
bors. 

In two of these nations the people re- 
tained government in their own hands, self- 
government, government of public opinion 
and public morality, government directly 
responsible to public opinion, existing and 
wielding power only so long as it expressed 
in policy and performance the will of its 
152 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

creators, sure to be thrown out of office 
the moment it moved contrary to that will 
or in harm to the highest interests of the 
nation as judged by the people of the na- 
tion. 

In these two nations the people who 
wanted peace were able to have peace be- 
cause they retained in their own hands 
through such responsible and responsive 
government control of all relations with 
neighbors, control of all that might lead 
to war, control of the war-making power 
itself. 

But in the third of these sponsors for the 
world's peace and progress the people, 
though wanting peace as much as the oth- 
ers, were without ability to have peace be- 
cause they put out of their hands control 
of outer relations, placed supreme power 
in the hands of a higher and irresponsible 
agency, were without public opinion upon 
those relations or even adequate informa- 
153 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

tion upon which to base opinion, public 
morality virtually abdicated as to all inter- 
national contact, and public feeling, trained 
to discipline and obedience, was itself a 
toy for the higher agency to manipulate 
and play with as it chose. 

In the third of these sponsors for the 
world's peace and progress the people 
through racial traits and tendencies had 
made themselves very many, had become 
great in energy and efficiency, powerful in 
wealth, resources, men. Though wanting 
peace for self-defense they had created the 
greatest, most highly organized, most for- 
midable army in the world. Mastery of 
this army like mastery of all dealings with 
other nations which might result in calling 
the mighty army to action, they turned 
over to the supreme agency. They turned 
themselves over, too, their opinions, their 
morality, all they possessed. They placed 
the power of life or death over themselves 
154 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

and their land in an authority which 
was higher than themselves though not 
quite as high as God, somewhere between 
earth and sky, morally responsible to 
neither. 

When the peoples of the two nations 
saw all these things in the third, discussed, 
analyzed, understood them, they were 
afraid. 

They saw all this military prowess, all 
this practical potentiality of the popula- 
tion, all this blind obedience and subserv- 
ient devotion of the people, massed under 
the absolute domination of an authority, 
a caste, unmodern, mediaeval, militant, 
menacing, openly avowing the superiority 
of physical over moral force, gladly show- 
ing always to the outer world ill-concealed 
portent of will to translate that superiority 
into action. 

We see now why for a quarter of a cen- 
tury the predominant factor in the politi- 
155 i 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

cal life of Europe had been fear that Ger- 
many would break the world's peace. 

The World's Fear of Germany 

Germany was feared not because of the 
inner, actual essence of German culture, 
not because the German people of them- 
selves were internationally immoral and 
in danger of committing international 
crime, but because Germany was so strong, 
so efficient, so valorous, so prepared, so 
organized, so indomitable, for defense, plus 
because she had placed all this in the power 
of a system which had to be feared because 
it ever presented, through its inherent 
tendencies, the menace of changing defense 
to attack. 

We Germans did not fear because we 
were blind, because in the midst of rapid 
acquirement of wealth and influence and 
comfort and luxury we thought a system 
which made all this possible must be 
156 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

strong and safe, because we knew we 
wanted only peace and could not bring 
ourselves even to the verge of fear that 
leaders enjoying our childlike trust could 
take such desperate hazard against such 
heavy odds and wantonly, heedlessly risk 
the fruits of generations of German prog- 
ress, play a million German lives in one 
wild cast for a bauble. 

We Germans now remember it was not 
England or France we feared in those long 
years of the armed peace ; we did not fear 
attack from them because we knew intui- 
tively that a self-governing people would 
not provoke an avoidable war. It was 
Russia we feared, with all her lack of mod- 
ern efficiency, and her we feared because 
we knew her rule was that of feudal ab- 
solutism. We do not forget that in the ex- 
planation of the war which our leaders 
first gave us it was Russia that bore down 
upon us in lust of conquest, France was 
157 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

only her unwilling tool, England would not 
fight. 

"We are forced to reflect that if one au- 
tocracy feared another and did not fear 
democracy — if a highly efficient autocracy 
feared a poorly organized and inefficient 
autocracy simply because it was autocracy, 
not only must autocracy and militarism to- 
gether be the arch enemy of peace and 
civilization — 

But how much more natural that democ- 
racies, wishing peace, should fear a highly 
organized, compact, efficient autocracy like 
ours, tremendous national energy and com- 
plete national unity behind it, all under the 
high hand which had systematically rat- 
tled its sabre in the face of Europe, all un- 
der an oligarchy which had taught its obe- 
dient vassals that "war is a moral obliga- 
tion, and, as such, an indispensable factor 
in civilization, ' ' that the German system is 
superior to all other systems and it is 
158 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

a moral duty to spread it among other peo- 
ples with the sword. 

Placing the Guilt 

And it came to pass in this the twentieth 
century, in an age of culture and the sway 
of moral force, in a developed world so- 
ciety where all mankind mingles with all 
others and in all his contact, except through 
organized nationalism, demands and gives 
respect for life and property, in an era 
when distances are as nothing, oceans but 
narrow common highways, frontiers more 
theoretical than real, nations but conven- 
ient groups of humanity, tribes and chiefs, 
bludgeons and spears presumably known 
only to history and archaeology — 

All Europe armed through fear the tribe 
of Teutons may attack; 

All Germans armed for defense if Eu- 
rope attacks them; 

And then the Deluge of blood! 
159 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Our devotion to our race and our land 
is great, but greater still is our love for 
truth. 

It is our sad duty to place the guilt, and 
we do it not for reproach, nor recrimina- 
tion, but to find the remedy, to seek regen- 
eration. 

Guilt falls upon him who broke the peace, 
who made the assault. 

Neighbors, long friendly, for some un- 
accountable reason grow mutually suspi- 
cious, each arms himself for defense in fear 
of the other, fear of attack, robbery, mur- 
der. Neither actually intends attack, each 
is sincere in preparing only for defense. 
If then in some fit of madness, some access 
of passion, one does take his weapon and 
go forth killing, burning, robbing, he is 
the criminal, the violator of law. 

He may not plead in justification his fear 
that his neighbor might attack him, for if 
both had waited till his neighbor turned 
160 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

criminal there would have been no crime. 

If none of the European powers had 
abandoned the status of defense — which in 
the nature of things none could abandon 
without timely warning reaching the oth- 
ers — there would have been no war. All 
wanted peace, security for all lay in the 
status quo, the crime was his who broke 
it down. 

The war became because it was willed, 
because there was somewhere plot to profit 
at neighbor's cost, because somewhere high 
authority ceased to be protective of the 
vast interests entrusted to it and chose to 
turn predatory. 

Responsibility for this crime against 
civilization falls first upon those who 
broke the peace, it falls next upon those 
who through blindness or negligence main- 
tained a government in which such homi- 
cidal highwaymanry was possible, it falls 
last upon all the peoples who maintained 
161 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

the tribal system of armed peace with the 
inevitable danger that some time or other 
at one or another place the barrier would 
break and the catastrophe be precipitated. 

The Tribe That Was a Nation Must Be 

We see now that Germany is responsible 
at the judgment seat of Civilization and 
History because Germany alone of all the 
nations maintained in one mighty combina- 
tion: 

Irresponsible autocracy ; 

Government by caste with war its toy 
and weapon, superiority of physical force 
its philosophy and preachment; 

Formidable military prowess — ' ' the 
army the nation, the nation the army ; ' ' 

Vast industrial potentiality; 

A people great in numbers, proficiency, 
energy; 

Marvelous patriotic unity among them; 

This unity finding expression not in in- 
162 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

telligent public opinion controlling the 
caste but in servilely permitting the caste 
to make public opinion to order, make war 
at will. 

Other nations contained some of these 
menaces, Germany alone had them all. 

All were required in combination to con- 
stitute menace of the first world magni- 
tude, Germany alone had the complete com- 
bination. 

We see now how civilization was inexor- 
ably forced to take its stand that this 
mighty menace could be permitted to ex- 
ist — 

Only in the midst of an armed defensive 
check-mate ; 

Only as long as it raised not its hand 
to strike. 

There was the fatal crime of our caste 
leadership, there the blunder worse than 
crime. 

It raised its hand to strike. 
163 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Once it had struck the blow, it was then 
written in letters of fire that it must itself 
perish. 

It and modern civilization could exist 
only in armed truce ; now that it had broken 
the truce, now that conflict had come, one 
or the other must go down. 

While it is true that the armed strength 
of civilization was not great enough to de- 
stroy it — the valor of the German people 
has seen to that — it must and shall be de- 
stroyed nevertheless. The German people 
will attend to that also. 

We see now that a modern people must 
be masters of their own destinies; must 
have government by public opinion and 
public moral force abroad as well as at 
home; the public opinion of a grown peo- 
ple must be always well informed, free, 
self-acting, not made to order like the im- 
pressions of children; public opinion must 
be fed with truth, not with the husks from 
164 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

which high authority has carefully ex- 
tracted the kernel ; the international moral- 
ity of a great people must not be at the 
mercy of a caste or minority with stand- 
ards lower than those of the people, am- 
bitions likely to run counter to the people's 
interests ; we no longer live in feudal days 
where the industrious millions from be- 
yond the moat may with safety place the 
power of life and death over them and 
their children in the hands of the warlike 
few of the castle. 

The authority in a nation to fix the in- 
ternational morality of a nation must be 
in the hands of those who made the na- 
tion. 

The power to make war must be wholly 
in the hands of those who are to bear the 
heat and burden of the war. 

The power to put a nation in peril of 
its life or its good repute must be wholly 
in the hands of those who are the nation. 
165 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Our government of caste failed us. It 
betrayed and deceived the country. We 
German people had built up an empire of 
culture, good name, prosperity; our mili- 
tary oligarchy struck it down. 

If Germany is to rise again, regain her 
rightful place in the world, resume the true 
work of the genius of her people among 
human-kind, she must have a government 
representative at all points of German 
character, intelligence and will. 

Germany cannot exist half culture, half 
savage — half nation, half tribe. 

Germany cannot hold her rightful place 
in civilization and at the same time main- 
tain a system inimical and menacing to civ- 
ilization's peace and security — must go 
with the stream of human progress, not 
try to dam it up with the artificial barrier 
of brute strength. 

The German people, never hitherto be- 
lieving their organization contained such 
166 



THE GEEMAN EEPUBLIC 

menace, but now learning through bitter- 
ness the truth, would be unworthy to enjoy 
the blessings of modern civilization did 
they not arise and assert their manhood, 
awake and declare themselves their own 
masters. 

Therefore — 

We, Delegates feom the Twenty-six 
States op Germany, in National Con- 
gress Assembled at Berlin, Do Hereby 
Declare that the Existing Govern- 
ment, Having Lost the Confidence of 
the People, Shall No Longer Exist, 
and Is Hereby Deposed. 

In Its Place We Do Hereby Ordain that 
from and after this Day the Govern- 
ment of Germany Shall be Republican 
in Form, With a Constitution Adopted 
by the People, an Elected Chief Ex- 
ecutive, and a Representative Parlia- 
ment Chosen by Full Manhood and 
Womanhood Suffrage to Which the 
President and His Ministers Shall 
Ever Be Directly Responsible. 



167 



CHAPTER XI 

THE GREAT, GENTLE REVOLUTION" 

The German Revolution, like the Ger- 
man spiritual awakening which preceded it, 
came gently, softly. 

Not a drop of blood was shed, not a blow 
struck, no man was imprisoned, no punish- 
ment was inflicted on any one. 

During the whole period of the awaken- 
ing, the agitation, the self-assertion, no ar- 
rests were made. The police and military 
authorities were alike discreet, making no 
effort to interfere with the assemblages of 
the people. 

The movement was irresistible, over- 
whelming, in its massed intelligence, char- 
acter, resoluteness. Nothing could have 
stood before it, nothing tried to stand be- 
fore it. 

168 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Softly as the succession of bright day- 
after a long, dark night came the Revolu- 
tion. The whole fabric of autocracy, di- 
vinely given power, military dominance, 
the rule of tradition, caste, clique, oli- 
garchy, the sway of physical force and hid- 
den intrigue, disappeared forever. All the 
artificial forms, all the relics of feudal days, 
all the pomp and trappings of regal power 
and military display, everything that was 
inconsistent with high-cultured modernism, 
faded quietly from view. 

The Provisional Government, established 
by the Congress, treated the Kaiser and 
all his family and entourage with the great- 
est respect and consideration. Public 
opinion would not have had it otherwise. 
There was general recognition of the fact 
that for a quarter of a century the Emperor 
had stood steadfast for peace, blocking in- 
numerable intrigues for war, and that he 
had at last succumbed only when the oli- 
169 



THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC 

garchy spun about him a net from which it 
was difficult for him to find his way. In 
many publicly adopted resolutions and ad- 
dresses the people expressed their appre- 
ciation of the character of the Kaiser, their 
gratitude for his signal services in aid of 
development of the industries and com- 
merce of the empire throughout his long 
reign. 

By order of the Provisional Government 
the Kaiser was appointed Prince of Heligo- 
land, with nominal powers, and when he 
and his family and suite, including the 
Crown Prince, were about to depart by 
special train for their future home on the 
rocky islet off the Frisian coast, half of 
Berlin gathered in the streets and at the 
railway station to bid him farewell. 

The German Emperor, but a short time 

before the most powerful monarch in the 

world, commander of millions of armed 

men, but now virtually a ward of his coun- 

170 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

try, was touched by these demonstrations 
of the good will and magnanimity of the 
people, and left Berlin with tears in his 
eyes. 

No effort was made by the new govern- 
ment to punish the men who had plotted the 
war, deceived the German Emperor and 
the German people in furtherance of their 
unworthy ambitions. Many of these men 
were known, much evidence in detail con- 
cerning the deception which they had prac- 
tised became available, and if it had been 
desired they could have been brought to 
trial. But the aroused, clear-eyed men of 
Germany saw that these offenders had been 
but part of the unfortunate system which 
they themselves had permitted to exist, 
gave them benefit of doubt and assumed 
their fault was more blunder than crime, 
permitted them to disappear from public 
view unnamed, untouched, unpunished. 

In this way of dignity, generosity, for- 
171 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

bearance, the German people effected one 
of the most momentous revolutions known 
to the pages of history. In a land where 
physical force had so long reigned supreme 
it seemed little could be done without its 
aid, where the doctrine of the superiority 
of might over right if only it be directed 
with discipline, skill, efficiency, had gath- 
ered vogue and pride till at last in sheer, 
mad excess of confidence in its own invin- 
cibility it had plunged a world into woe — 
In this land silent, unseeable, intangible, 
imponderable moral force had risen, scat- 
tered to the winds all the legions, all the 
great guns, all the bludgeons and swords 
of the rule of iron and blood, all the para- 
phernalia of the invincible armada of ab- 
solutism and brute strength accumulated 
through the generations and welded into 
the most nearly perfect, most powerful 
militant machine the world had ever seen 
— not only scattered them upon the winds 
172 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

of oblivion, but did it without raising a 
hand in harshness, without vengeance, 
without punishment, with only gentleness. 
There was much sunshine in the land, 
the search for truth had found its prize, 
Germany was at last a nation. 



173 



CHAPTER XII 

THE TKEATY OF UNIVERSAL PEACE 

One of the first acts of the German Na- 
tional Congress was to issue formal invi- 
tation to all the belligerent nations to send 
delegates to a peace conference to be held 
at The Hague a fortnight later. This in- 
vitation was of course promptly accepted 
by all the governments, and their repre- 
sentatives met and began their work at the 
same time the German Congress was in 
session at Berlin. 

The first day of the treaty conference 
the representatives of France, England, 
Russia, Italy and their allies presented a 
formal declaration on behalf of their gov- 
ernments and their peoples, in substance 
as follows: 

174 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

They had never been and were not now 
hostile to the German people; they bore 
no malice or hatred; they songht no pun- 
ishment, only the establishment of inter- 
national order and safety. 

They had never wished or sought the 
crushing of Germany, had never contem- 
plated break of the peace unless they were 
themselves attacked ; they had never wished 
and did not wish to take over any German 
territory, or to interfere in even the small- 
est degree with the right of the German 
people to work out their destiny in their 
own way at home and abroad. 

They had never sought and were not now 
seeking to place any restrictions whatso- 
ever upon German freedom of action with- 
in their inherent and equal rights as an 
equal member of the society of nations, 
either on land or sea. 

But they had sought, and now demanded 
that Germany should grant like freedom 
175 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

and security to all other peoples, that Ger- 
man military aggression should no longer 
menace the peace of the world or the in- 
tegrity and security of neighboring states, 
that while the German people had full right 
to maintain at home any political system 
or government they chose they must aban- 
don forever all effort to force that system 
upon other peoples who were unwilling to 
accept it and preferred the system to which 
they were accustomed. 

The same day the German delegates pre- 
sented the Address to the World adopted 
by the Congress at Berlin a few days be- 
fore, and thus at the very outset of the con- 
ference it became apparent that the bellig- 
erents now stood for the same thing, that 
all had desired peace, that there never had 
been any rational cause of war, that all 
humanity were now as one for the sov- 
ereignty of moral law in all the relations 
of modern governments and peoples. 
176 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

The following day the representatives of 
the new Germany proposed to restore all 
territory of other nations now held by Ger- 
man armies, to indemnify Belgium for all 
losses in accordance with the findings of 
an international commission to be created 
for that purpose, to indemnify all private 
losses in the war-swept areas of France 
and Poland also to be adjudged by other 
international commissions, and to give the 
people of Alsace and Lorraine opportunity 
to choose their future national allegiance, 
or to set up an independent principality 
under the protection of the signatory pow- 
ers, through a plebiscite. 

Within a week the Treaty of Peace was 
concluded and signed by the representa- 
tives of all the nations, and soon there- 
after was ratified by all the home gov- 
ernments. Its principal provisions, in ad- 
dition to the foregoing offered by Ger- 
many, were as follows : 
177 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

No indemnities from nation to nation, 
excepting those provided in the German 
offer. 

Serbia restored to her former status with 
addition of certain areas inhabited by Ser- 
bians. 

All Poland, including the area formerly 
within Germany, made a self-governing 
state under the protection of the signatory 
powers. 

Turkish political power eliminated from 
Europe and confined to a part of Asia- 
Minor ; Constantinople and European Tur- 
key placed under an international govern- 
ment, with freedom of the straits to the 
shipping of all nations forever; the sur- 
viving Armenians segregated in a self- 
governing state under international protec- 
tion. 

Otherwise the status quo ante bellum 
was restored. 

The Treaty of Peace, received through- 
178 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

out the world with warmest satisfaction, 
was followed by other events of such mo- 
mentous character that for a time man- 
kind was fairly bewildered. 

Greece, Roumania and Bulgaria deposed 
their kings in bloodless revolutions and set 
up democratic governments assuring full 
control by the people of all their affairs. 

The Czar of Russia issued an ukase in- 
creasing the powers of the Duma to such 
an extent that Russia became a self-govern- 
ing democracy, with a representative and 
responsible ministerial administration, an 
hereditary sovereign presiding, like Eng- 
land. 

The Duma was in session, and the first 
act of the Russian parliament was to re- 
lieve the Jews of all political disabilities 
and restrictions whatsoever. 

The English government at once gave 
Ireland full home rule with an inner local 
autonomy for Ulster. 
179 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

The Turkish people reorganized their 
government along democratic lines, and 
the new government abolished all religious 
persecution or discrimination and offered 
adequate indemnification and succour to 
all Armenians who had suffered during the 
war. 



180 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE POEWABD MAECH OF CIVILIZATION 

Only a few days later, while the world 
was still rejoicing over the Peace and the 
German Political Reformation, there came 
another act of world statesmanship incom- 
parably greater in its effect upon the civil- 
ized peoples than the momentous events 
which had preceded it and prepared the 
way for it. 

The German National Congress unani- 
mously adopted, and the Provisional Gov- 
ernment immediately proclaimed to all the 
nations, the following epoch-making docu- 
ment : 

We, the Geeman People, denounce hu- 
man war as a relic of barbarism, incon- 
sistent with a modern civilization founded 
upon moral force, a calamity to mankind, 
181 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

as unnecessary and insensate as it is sav- 
age and devastating. 

We declare the use or the fear of the 
use of physical violence in regulating the 
relations of one nation with another is as 
violative of morality as the use of like 
physical violence in the relations of indi- 
vidual man with his neighbor or business 
competitor. 

We denounce the system of intensely 
selfish nationalism, armed on land and sea, 
made formidable by hysteric tribalism 
called patriotism, inherently threatening 
neighbors with physical violence, forcing 
all neighbors to arm for self-defense but 
with inevitable danger that at any moment 
fear, misunderstanding, blunder, passion 
or crime may change defense to assault, as 
a survival of feudalism and the predatory 
rivalries of barbaric chieftains, a scourge 
to humanity and a disgrace to civilized 
mankind. 

182 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

"We declare that in the present develop- 
ment of civilization, where morality reigns 
as the law of society within each of the ad- 
vanced nations, where justice rules, rights, 
life and property are protected by law and 
physical violence attack upon them is pun- 
ishable as crime, like morality must reign 
between nations, appeal to physical vio- 
lence in the name of nationalism must be 
treated as crime on a larger scale punish- 
able under society's international law, an 
armed peace portending possible criminal 
war must be made as unnecessary, unlaw- 
ful and impossible between neighboring 
nations as between neighboring individuals, 
families, villages or cities. 

We declare that in the present state of 
civilization where the killing of one man 
for selfish purpose within a frontier is 
murder in the eyes of society, the killing 
of a million men for selfish purpose beyond 
a frontier must be a million murders in 
183 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

the eyes of the society of all mankind — one 
people of the earth in their dnty to respect 
the moral law and their right to receive 
in return the protection of that law, moral- 
ity being universal, limited by no frontiers. 

We declare that while in the present as 
in the past status of human existence the 
inhabitants of the earth must be subdivided 
into groups for ethnical, geographical and 
social reasons, nations and nationalism 
must remain, all are mere families of the 
human race, all rivalries, jealousies, 
hatreds, animosities, hostilities between 
them, other than peaceful competition in 
the arts, sciences, industry, commerce, are 
relics of barbarism and must be abolished. 

It has been charged against us German 
people that we more than any other of 
earth's families were responsible for per- 
sistence of the traditional rivalry with 
threat of armed aggression in culmination 
thereof, because we were the most closely 
184 



THE GEKMAN KEPUBLIC 

knit, most perfectly unified, most efficient 
and energetic of the great peoples who per- 
mitted the power of making war to remain 
within the control of a feudal system with 
standards less moral than those of the peo- 
ple, more to gain and less to lose than the 
people by resort to the desperate hazard 
of war, therefore more dangerous to the 
peace of the world. 

If German unity, strength, energy, in- 
tense nationalism, combined with the ar- 
chaic form of our government, have given 
us leadership among the peoples of earth in 
military prowess, made us the most feared 
and most dangerous members of the human 
family, compelled others to arm in fear of 
possible aggression from us and thus re- 
tained in the world the immoral and bar- 
baric system of physical violence as the 
ultimate tribunal of international dispute, 
that is a distinction, a leadership, a respon- 
sibility which we the German people never 
185 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

sought, which was thrust upon us by cir- 
cumstances, which we would not keep if we 
could, which we now cast away, and re- 
nounce forever. 

We have corrected the defect in our or- 
ganization by establishing a German gov- 
ernment which shall henceforth conform to 
the universal moral law in dealing with 
other nations as we the people have always 
wished to conform and had been deceived 
into the belief that our government wished 
to conform. It shall never again be pos- 
sible for the world to hold Germany re- 
sponsible, directly or indirectly, in whole 
or in part, for reversion of civilization 
backward to the physical violence and 
criminality of man's savage era. 

Henceforth the German nation will never 
encroach, nor seek to encroach or threaten 
to encroach upon the rights of its neigh- 
bors. 

Maintenance of the system of preserving 
186 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

international peace by international pre- 
paredness to make war is shown by the ex- 
perience of mankind to be senseless, sav- 
age, dangerous, ruinous. 

It is a senseless and savage system which 
every nation must of necessity preserve as 
long as it is preserved by its neighbors. 

It is a senseless and savage system which 
diverts a large part of the energies of man- 
kind from man's service to man's harm, 
which all mankind knows should be abol- 
ished, but which all mankind retains be- 
cause of the absence of intelligent co-opera- 
tive action by the nations. 

The absence of such co-operative action 
in suppression of a common plague is dis- 
graceful to the morality and the intelli- 
gence of modern civilization, is humiliat- 
ing confession of a truly barbaric impo- 
tency to act with others for the good of all. 

If ours is in whole or part the responsi- 
bility for survival of that system and for 
187 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

the great war which grew out of it, we 
wish to atone by taking action which shall 
forever abolish the system and forever 
make human war an impossibility. 

We, the German People, hereby propose 
to the world : 

We Stand Ready, Immediately, to Sign 
Tbeaties of Peepetual Peace and Aebi- 
tbation op all Intebnational Disputes 
Without Exception oe Reserve with all 
Othee Nations. 

We Stand Ready, Immediately, in Con- 
currence With Other Nations, to Dis- 
band Our Armies, Dismantle Our Navy, 
Raze Our Fortifications, Convert Our 
Munition Works, Melt Oue Guns, Stop 
all. Military Seevice. 

We Stand Ready to Join Other Na- 
tions in Creating a Supreme Coubt of the 
Woeld to Decide all Appeals fbom Tbi- 

BUNALS OF AbBITBATION, ThEIB DECISION TO 

be Final. 

We Stand Ready to Join Otheb Na- 
tions in Establishing Undeb the Abso- 
lute and Peepetual Conteol of the Su- 
peeme Coubt of the Woeld an Intebna- 
tional constabulaby fobce on land and 
188 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Sea With Powee to Enfoece the De- 
cisions OF THE COUET IN CASE OF NEED, 

Punish oe Discipline Recalciteants oe 
Offendees Against Inteenational Law 
and moeality, police the woeld foe reg- 
ulation oe coeeection of ill-developed 
oe Peimitive Peoples oe Teibes. 

In Puesuance of This Oue Peoposal to 
Abolish Foeevee Human Wae and the 
Waste of Human Eneegy in Peepaeation 
foe War and to Set Up in Theie Place 
the Rule of Untveesal Moeal Law With 
Efficient Means of Peeseeving Inteena- 
tional Peace, Oedee and Secueity — 

We Heeeby Invite all the Nations of 
the Eaeth to Send Fully Empoweeed 
Delegates to an Inteenational Disarma- 
ment and Univeesal Peace Confeeence to 
be Held at The Hague, Decembee Twen- 
ty-Fifth, This Yeae. 



189 



CHAPTER XIV 

GERMANY AT LAST CONQUERS THE WORLD 

Promulgation of the foregoing produced 
a world effect which was one of the most 
wonderful things known to the history of 
mankind. 

It was as if the earth had been swept by 
a prolonged, furious storm, all nature 
stricken, all human spirit heavy, downcast. 
Suddenly the elements became still, the 
gloom lifted, brilliant sunshine illumined 
earth and sky, the world was once more fit 
and good to live in. 

Germany's self -regeneration and her 
leadership of the nations in the epoch- 
making upward leap of civilization were 
hailed from one end of Christendom to the 
other with indescribable joy. 

Meetings, parades, jubilations, divine 
190 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

services with prayer and song of gratitude, 
were held in every country. For days half 
the human race ceased its normal activities 
and gave itself up wholly to expression 
of its new happiness. 

Untold millions of people caught up the 
thought that the German people, uncon- 
quering and unconquered in the arena of 
physical force, had now the glory of a com- 
plete and enduring conquest of the world 
through inspiring moral leadership. 

Germany was at once with loud acclaim 
restored to her former place in the esteem, 
the confidence, the affections of all the peo- 
ples of the earth. All reproaches, all bit- 
terness were wiped away in a moment. 

A mighty wave of fraternal feeling ran 
through humanity. 

The soldiers of France, Germany, Eng- 
land, Russia, Austria, Italy, all who had 
remained in peaceful contact throughout 
the period of the armistice along the former 
191 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

lines of battle, now advanced weaponless 
beyond their fronts, met and commingled 
with their former foe, embraced one an- 
other, called one another brave brothers, 
and many grim warriors were not ashamed 
to be seen crying like women. 

For hundreds of miles along the fronts 
where fierce war had so lately raged, the 
soldiers of all the armies vied with another 
in making expeditions in force beyond 
their trenches, marching with flying flags 
and bands of music at their head across 
the shell-scarred space, carrying flowers 
and placing them reverently upon the 
graves of their fallen foemen. 

Along the frontiers the people of thou- 
sands of cities, towns and villages, in spon- 
taneous outburst of the long fettered hu- 
man impulse to look upon all others as 
kinsmen, gave fetes and feasts in honor 
of their invited guests from across the 
border. 

192 



THE GEKMAN KEPUBLIC 

In America, where dwell so many of the 
sons and daughters of all the lands late 
at war, international fraternization was 
universal. 

In few places of all Christendom could 
one walk upon the streets or highways 
where people were to be met without 
seeing, hearing, feeling or sensing the 
depth of the joy that had entered all 
hearts. 

. To hundreds of millions of war-worn 
men and women of the fighting lands, long 
heavy with the burden of pain, fear, doubt, 
loss, suffering, the long vigil of sickened 
soul and nerves strained near to the break- 
ing point, it was as if they had been through 
a prolonged, severe illness and now were 
well and strong again. 

For three years a German oligarchy had 
made all the world feel old; now the Ger- 
man people had made all the world feel 
young. 

193 



THE GEEMAN BEPUBLIC 

No such uplifting of the spiritual na- 
ture of man had ever happened. 

The few comparable events of the past — 
if any preceding event could be compared 
with it in effect upon the welfare and hap- 
piness of the human race — had become gen- 
erally known only after the lapse of weeks, 
months, or years. 

By modern means of world communi- 
cation and the millions-multiplied is- 
sues of the modern press, virtually all 
the peoples of all civilization were al- 
most instantly possessed of these glad 
tidings. 

Thus it came so much more dramatically. 
It was spectacular, convulsive. All man- 
kind felt at the same moment the same in- 
spiration of joy over a mighty blessing fall- 
ing suddenly out of the sky. The great 
momentum of mass psychology was never 
before illustrated on a scale so large and 
intense. Compared with it the mass unity 
194 



THE GEKMAN EEPUBLIC 

and enthusiasm of the Germans, the 
French, at the beginning of the war, im- 
pressive and splendid as they were, wore 
a narrower aspect. For now there were no 
clouds of cruel selfishness upon the bright 
scene, no specters of death and destruction 
lurking in shadows. 

Intuitively millions of men compared 
their present exaltation of spirit, their feel- 
ing of oneness and brotherhood with all 
mankind, with their mental state when na- 
tionalism, patriotism, duty to country had 
summoned them forth to effort and to sac- 
rifice. Fine, noble, human as they knew 
that was, worthy, uplifting, strengthening, 
purifying, in contrast with that which they 
now felt it seemed to many of them some- 
what petty, without vision or depth, the 
momentary joy of a child. This was the 
deep-running content of a fully developed, 
strong man proud of the race of which he 
was a part. 

195 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

That other spelled something primitive 
in man's nature, rivalry of brnte strength, 
struggle, blow for blow, tribe against tribe, 
the weaker going down, the stronger gain- 
ing as prize for his prowess the little con- 
tent of the spearman's pride in a duty done 
and the greater discontent of civilized 
man's wonderment as to why he had struck 
the other down and why such striking and 
struggling were among the needs of his 
civilization. 

This was so much higher, so much nearer 
the skies and the infinite, took so much 
hatred, selfishness, violence, danger, an- 
guish out of life, opened up such possibili- 
ties of nobler things, that it seemed as if 
mankind had been born again, was a new 
race with a better organism, more perfect 
functioning, inhabiting a remade world in 
which good health and good feeling and 
good works instead of disease, suffering, 
hatred, evil, were contagious. 
196 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

Instantly, too, all the world realized the 
true significance of the event. War at an 
end, armament at an end, navies at an 
end, all the taxation, the wealth, the 
energy, the resources these had ab- 
sorbed, all this heavy burden on the 
backs of the people, released for employ- 
ment in better ways. For it was already 
certain that universal disarmament and 
outlawry of war were at hand. Before 
Germany had proposed it her statesmen — 
for now that the people ruled their land the 
genius of the gifted race was bringing forth 
state leaders of the highest rank, vision 
and quality — knew that America, England, 
France, Austria, Italy, and other impor- 
tant nations would join. Their adherence, 
every one at once saw, meant universal ac- 
ceptance, meant that if any power, great or 
small, elected to stay without the pale, 
keep a national army or navy, and employ 
these physical forces in breaking the peace 
197 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

or other violation of the moral law of uni- 
versal society, such armies and navies were 
sure to fall into the clutches of the inter- 
national police. 

In response to this unfettering of such 
vast resources hitherto squandered in in- 
struments for striking men down, there 
passed through all the peoples a wave of 
redoubled activity in all works for lifting 
men up. In education, charity, health, hy- 
giene, sanitation, housing, hospitals, homes, 
social co-operation, industrial training, 
teaching the prevention of disease, com- 
munity uplift, the social canker, ameliora- 
tion of the ills of the defective, unfortu- 
nate or perverted, in every field of human 
helpfulness there was renewed and en- 
larged activity, more money to use, more 
men and women to work for humanity. 

From the greater and more developed 
nations more energy went forth into the 
byways and remote places and out among 
198 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

the lowlier, more backward peoples to help, 
to ward off contagion and disease, mini- 
mize suffering, abate poverty, educate 
the ignorant, save babies, save girls and 
women, fight vice and degradation, scour 
squalor, encourage mercifulness to man and 
beast, tear down the tyranny of custom, 
tradition, habit, to raise the average of hu- 
man worthiness and human happiness. 

Government vied with government in 
finding and putting in motion new agencies 
of service, new ways of promoting the wel- 
fare, prosperity and contentment of their 
peoples. The best of German organized 
efficiency and discipline, its staying of the 
hand of greed and insistence upon fair 
wage and decent life for all toilers, its pa- 
ternal helpfulness to the infirm, the hurt, 
the aged, the luckless who needed help, its 
skill in minimizing poverty and in making 
the humblest home and the poorest street 
of the slums brighter, cleaner, more livable, 
199 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

its genius for well ordered housekeeping, 
for teaching, training, man-building, found 
imitators and followers everywhere. Ger- 
man culture did indeed spread over the 
earth, pushed by the helping hand and not 
forced by the mailed fist. 

The nations organized to fight and con- 
quer the white plague, gave to that noble 
effort a part of the energies they had for- 
merly employed in maintenance of the 
plague of physical violence and war. Ger- 
man science and chemistry, released from 
the task of compounding material for liquid 
fires and noxious gases to thrust at their 
neighbors, invented a specific for tubercu- 
losis which a grateful world received as 
manna with which to save untold millions 
of human lives and avert untold ages of 
human woe. 

There soon spread over the world reali- 
zation of the revolutionary and inspiring 
fact that now no man could have as enemy 
200 



THE GERMAN REPUBLIC 

anywhere in the world another man. 
Henceforth his only enemies wonld be 
those of nature's making, ill-health, dis- 
ease, contagion, poverty, plague, hurtful 
habit, moral and physical weakness, and 
that all mankind would be his friend and 
brother in fighting these. 

The millennium had not come. Nature's 
law of struggle, survival of the fittest, was 
not repealed. But mankind had reached 
the stage of spiritual growth where he was 
determined to soften as much as lay in his 
power the austerity of that fundamental 
law, play the game like a man not like a 
savage, be no longer parasite or wild beast, 
live but help to live, the strong to protect 
not prey upon the weak. There were even 
dreams, not unrealizable in this regener- 
ated race, of the quick coming of the day 
when individual like governmental energies 
would be consecrated to human service, 
when gluttony for needless and selfishly 
201 



THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC 

used wealth would be as much taboo as 
swinish gluttony for excess of food and 
drink. 

Pain is not banished from the world, but 
pleasure predominates, and all society co- 
operates its activities in minimizing the 
one and augmenting the other. 

The millennium had not come. But the 
open, glassy, accusing eyes of women and 
children floating out to the Atlantic from 
the Lusitania's shattered hull, countless 
new graves dotting the European ravines 
and hillsides, myriads of human hearts 
sore with suffering, bereavement, wreck, 
ruin, throughout the years of man's mad- 
ness, had not after all been in vain. 

Out of the darkness, the travail, the 
agony, the crime, the seeming reversion of 
civilization to savagery, had come a much 
brighter and better world. 

THE END. 

202 



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